


A Case of You

by Watcher in the Woods (TheWaryWarbler)



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:47:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29909595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWaryWarbler/pseuds/Watcher%20in%20the%20Woods
Summary: While Sora was busy saving worlds, two lone warriors from two lost worlds were busy saving each other: A 7/8/KH collage of humorous bits and introspective pieces, pasted together with passion on a background of friendship and love.
Relationships: Cloud/Leon (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. Disquiet In The Night

**Author's Note:**

> All people and places belong to Square-Enix and/or Disney.  
> The title belongs to Joni Mitchell.
> 
> Rated M for sex, language and violence. Spoilers for all.
> 
> If you're in a big hurry to reach your destination, perhaps you should try another avenue. This is a romance between Cloud Strife and Squall Leonhart; it hardly moves at all.

**۵۵۵۵۵** **  
Part One - Traverse Town**  
-Chapter One-  
Disquiet In The Night  
 **۵۵۵۵۵**

Somewhere in the distance a dog was barking, faint and far off; a solemn staccato that carried across the stillness to the ears of a man who lay listening, alone in the night, when shadows play and sleep won't come.

Alone in his bed, with only his recurrent dreams and restless demons for company. They were always wakeful too, locked in their own unrelenting dance like the shadows on the wall, circling in a ghostly waltz to a tempo of their own. Advancing and receding like the ebb and flow of tides, like lovers cast in silhouette, embracing and retreating in the streetlight's amber glow.

Alone in the desolate hours, with no warm body for distraction, no arms for comfort. Comfort was not allowed; companionship, denied. The dance of love, unwanted.

The dog's barking became more insistent, worrisome, and the window of time when a return to sleep was possible had long since passed; even without the disruption, there would be no more sleep tonight. With a sigh of resignation, the man rose in the dark and dressed quietly so as not to disturb the other occupants of the small house. Grabbing his gunblade, he stepped outside to investigate.

He paused momentarily to listen before turning towards the door that led to Second District, leaning into the heavy wooden gate with a shove of his shoulder and then waiting on the other side until it had closed behind him with a solid, satisfying _thunk_. Then he was moving, quickly and quietly, through the deserted town, past closed shops and shuttered houses, towards the sound of the barking dog. The only other sounds to be heard were the muffled footfalls of his steps and the gentle clinking of his belts, the soft swish of leather and occasional _whoosh_ of his gunblade, but even most of the Heartless were still sleeping in this early hour. Turning right, in front of the Gizmo Shop, he headed down the alley towards the Dalmatians' house, and there he found his barking dog, along with the cause of her distress.

"What've you got there, girl?" he said softly, gently patting Perdita on the head as he knelt to inspect the unconscious man at her feet. After confirming that he was indeed still alive, Leon examined the stranger more thoroughly, checking him over for injuries that would make it too dangerous to move him without assistance. Though it was difficult in the dim light to assess the full extent of the damage, he had a couple of nasty slashes across his stomach, and the front of his clothing was soaked with blood. A ragged gash on the the top of his head had also bled profusely, staining a large section of his light-colored hair a rich, rusty brown, but unlike the wound on his stomach, it had already clotted over. And thankfully, nothing felt broken.

Leon pulled his last vial of potion from an inner pocket of his jacket and emptied its contents over the stranger's stomach, hoping it would be enough to at least slow down the bleeding. Then he wrapped the man's tattered red cape securely around his torso, tying the ends to hold the makeshift bandage in place. Unable to do anything more for the man until he could get him back to the house, Leon hurriedly moved the large sword lying next to him into the Dalmatians' house for safekeeping. Then he hoisted the stranger into his arms and, with a nod to Perdita, headed for home.

Always on the alert, his eyes automatically scanned the area for danger as his feet set a steady pace along the path traveled everyday for the last eight years, but the hush that still hung over the town made the trip home a quiet one; only once did he encounter a lone Shadow, which he promptly took out with a fire spell. It annoyed him to waste magic on such a weak foe, but with his arms full, it was easier than trying to maneuver his gunblade. With little else to engage his attention, it soon turned to the enigmatic stranger in his arms.

Though it was hard to guess the man's age through all the dried blood on his face, Leon could see that his features were delicate, and his lax, unguarded expression painted them with the impression of innocence and youth. Yet he was dressed like a seasoned warrior, and that huge sword, strangely swathed in strips of cloth, could hardly be wielded by a young boy. Even Leon had found it almost prohibitively heavy, and he couldn't imagine how the fragile-looking person in his arms would be able to even lift it. Still, looks could be deceiving, he noted with a grunt of exertion as he shifted the man's weight in his arms; he was considerably heavier than he looked – evidently more muscled than his slender frame would suggest.

As Leon was contemplating these inconsistencies, the man struggled against him with a strength that further belied his appearance. Even in his weakened state, he was unusually strong, and Leon had to hold on to him tightly, speaking soothing words to calm him. His eyes fluttered open briefly, and he moaned something that sounded like a name. Then just as suddenly, he settled back down, collapsing limply against Leon's chest.

The day – such as that was in Traverse Town – was just about to break as Leon threw open the door to his small home in Third District and called out to his housemates for help. He kicked the door shut behind him and then paused for a moment to assess the situation: The table in the living room was larger, but the lighting was better in the kitchen – plus it was close to the sink...

Coming swiftly to his decision, Leon carried the injured man into the kitchen, carefully cradling his body as he swept the table clear of place mats and papers. Then he gently laid his burden down, propping a chair beneath his knees to hold up his legs, which were hanging over the edge. By the time he had a large pot in the sink, filling with water, and the stove turned on high, the girls were stumbling and grumbling into the kitchen, still rubbing the sleep out of complaining eyes. But when Aerith saw the man on the table, she came fully awake, eyes now wide with an odd mixture of joy and fear.

"Cloud!" she cried out, draping herself protectively over his battered body and surrounding him with her slender arms. Yuffie was right beside her, with one hand over her heart and the other one over her mouth, while Leon just stood there in stunned surprise as he realized who it was he had found.

Then all together they sprang into action, Yuffie grabbing washcloths and towels while Aerith gathered potions and medical supplies, and Leon began removing armor and boots and belts. Soon the water was boiling, and the washcloths were sterilizing; first aid stocks had been counted and checked, and Yuffie was on her way to First District for Cid and supplies.

Leon and Aerith worked together to remove the rest of Cloud's clothing, and when the cape came off and the wing came out, Aerith began to weep very softly, wondering what they had done to him now. Leon wondered briefly who _they_ were before lightly tapping her on the arm to redirect her attention back to the task at hand, and they finished stripping Cloud down to his boxers. They were busy cleaning him up as well as they could, healing as they went with a combination of potions and spells, when Yuffie and Cid returned. Cid stormed in, outdoing even himself with the string of obscenities he flung towards his unconscious friend, but the deep concern in his voice was obvious. It was obvious how much they _all_ cared, and Leon couldn't help but wonder if his own companions had cared that much for him...

He doubted it.

He wondered what was so special about the man before him that he should inspire such loyalty and love in his friends. He certainly didn't look like much of a hero, with his fragile-looking ribs and his pale, bruised skin.

Leon stopped his pointless pondering and reached for the small box containing his suturing supplies. Though their examination had confirmed that, miraculously, no bones were broken, Cloud's torso was covered with deep, angry bruises, and the two slashes on his stomach weren't responding well to healing. Even Aerith's strongest curaga spells had done little, and Leon could see that she was running out of magic. He also knew, though Aerith would never admit it, that she wasn't overly fond of needles, preferring to rely on her magical powers whenever possible, and he suspected that it would be even worse, being Cloud. And so, as he did with so many things – without being asked – Leon took the unpleasant task upon himself and set about sewing the man back together.

Thankfully, Cloud remained unconscious throughout most of their ministrations, waking only once while Leon was stitching the second cut, and it had taken Cid and Leon both to restrain him. Aerith tried to calm him, but her attempts only seemed to agitate him further. Deeply dilated eyes flew open, and he choked out, " _Aeris?_ Am I dead?"

Leon noted the confused, almost panicked look on Cloud's face and the troubled look on Aerith's as she gently told him no, but Cloud struggled even harder to get up, as if he didn't believe her. Leon moved over him more forcefully then, pinning Cloud's shoulders to the table and holding his frantic eyes with his own, steadier gaze. "You have to be still," he commanded in his calm, deep voice, and surprisingly, Cloud obeyed. He soon sank back into unconsciousness, and Leon finished sewing him up.

By the time he had tied the last suture, they were all exhausted and hungry – it was almost time for lunch, and they hadn't even had breakfast. So Cid and Yuffie left to get take-out from the diner while Leon put away the supplies, and Aerith attempted to rinse some of the blood out of Cloud's hair. Then – without Aerith even having to ask – Leon carried Cloud to his room and settled him into his bed.

They had just finished cleaning up the kitchen when Yuffie and Cid returned with the food, and the four companions ate in silence, all thoughts on the man asleep in Leon's room. It was Yuffie who finally voiced what was on everyone's mind, directing her question to Aerith. "Is Cloud gonna be okay?"

"Well ... he's lost a lot of blood," Aerith answered hesitantly, pulling herself from her own thoughts as she turned towards the younger girl. "It will probably take him a while to fully recover." Seeing Yuffie's face grow even more worried at her less than encouraging words, Aerith patted her on the hand and continued with more confidence. "But Cloud is strong, and the Jenova cells won't let him die that easily."

Reassured a little by Aerith's answer, Yuffie began another question, but faltered before finishing. "Those slashes ... are they ... ?"

"...from the Masamune?" Aerith finished for her, speaking aloud the words that Yuffie had swallowed. "I suspect so."

"Then that means that fuckin' son of a goddamned bitch is back," Cid contributed.

"Probably," Aerith agreed, thinking that, for once, Cid's colorful description was actually rather accurate and to the point. "But I don't think he's _here._ " She paused for a moment, contemplating something which she chose not to share, and then offered a weak smile instead. "Maybe Cloud will be able to tell us when he wakes up."

"Or maybe not," said Cid.

**۵۵۵۵۵**

They all hung around the house for the rest of the day, none of them willing to leave for long. Cid left just long enough to hang a closed sign on his shop door, which, in his haste, he had forgotten to do earlier, and Yuffie went with him to pick up a movie from the video store on the way back. Later on in the afternoon, Leon left for a little while to make a quick run through town, dispatching a few Heartless and working off some tension. Aerith never left Cloud's side.

As it got later and later and still she showed no sign of moving, Leon threw together a light dinner and had to drag her to the table, where she hastily swallowed a few bites while Yuffie took over her bedside watch. Then she returned to Cloud's side and remained there for the rest of the night. Cid and Yuffie watched the comedy Yuffie had rented, but neither one of them laughed, and Leon attempted to read, but couldn't keep his mind from wandering. Lost in their own thoughts, no one had much to say; even Yuffie was quiet. Late into the night, Cid went home at last, and Yuffie crawled off to bed, but still Aerith refused to leave Cloud's side. Leon turned off the lights and settled down on the couch.

It had been a long, tiring day, but even so, he couldn't sleep. His head was pounding, and his mind wouldn't stop digging through all of the information it had accumulated over the past year about Cloud and his world. Frankly, he hadn't paid that much attention to the three refugees from Gaia when they talked about their world, but he suddenly found himself very interested.

He knew the basics of their tale – the tale which had brought the unlikely group together – and he knew a lot of the names, but he couldn't find the one he was seeking: Jenova. He wasn't even sure if he was searching for a person or a plant or a _thing_ , but whatever it was, Cloud evidently had its cells in his body, and they were helping to keep him alive.

Leon knew about Avalanche and its members, and that Cloud had been their leader. He'd heard of Shin-Ra and Sephiroth, and the ex-SOLDIER's struggle against them. He was familiar with Midgar and Mako and Meteor. He'd even heard of the Masamune. But there was nothing about Jenova.

The Masamune. That bought up another question for which Leon had no answer. It was obvious they had been speaking earlier of Sephiroth, but Leon had understood that he was dead. They had killed him; _Cloud_ had killed him. How could he be back?

And something was bothering Aerith. She had been anxious and distracted all day, and Leon didn't think it was merely her concern for Cloud that was making her nervous.

With all of these questions still swirling in his head, Leon felt his eyelids grow heavy at last, and he fell into an uneasy sleep. When he woke in the early morning hours, as he so often did, his head was still pounding, and he knew he hadn't slept for long.

He got up and went to the bathroom for some aspirin, and stopped by his bedroom on the way back to check on Aerith and Cloud, finding her asleep in the chair with her head on the bed. He gently roused her and ordered her to her own bed, promising to come and get her if there were any change in Cloud. Then he settled himself in the vacated chair and opened his book, but couldn't stay focused for long. By the third page, he gave up and put the book down, allowing his attention to go where it wanted: to the man asleep in his bed.

Cloud hadn't moved a muscle from the position in which Leon had laid him down – on his back with his arms at his sides and one leg bent outward, his head turned slightly to the side. Leon leaned in closer and studied him intently, taking in every detail like the well-trained SeeD he was.

Cloud's face was pale but peaceful, his skin almost flawless with the faintest dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose and the ridge of his cheeks, not even discernible except from up close. His features were also close to perfection, fair and delicate every bit of him, from his pale brows and lashes to his refined cheekbones, down the graceful slope of his nose and over full yet dainty lips to the sharply cut chin. Leon had never seen a face quite so perfect, _exquisite_ ... like a finely crafted doll.

He knew he shouldn't be using such feminine words to describe the man – the _SOLDIER_ – suspecting that Cloud wouldn't like it any more than Leon had liked being called 'pretty' back at Garden, but it just couldn't be helped; Cloud Strife was beautiful.

Leon's eyes traveled down the slender curve of Cloud's neck, lingering on the fragile-looking collarbone before straying back to his face, following the clean line of his jaw up to the small earring in his left ear and then diving into the wild mass of hair. Though dirty and dull, and still matted with blood, it was clearly a very light blond, and Leon wondered what color his eyes were. He knew they were blue – he'd certainly heard Aerith's description of the man enough times – but what shade? A grey-blue like his? Or a bright blue like Sora's? They had been too dilated to tell when he opened them earlier.

Leon sat for a long time just watching Cloud breathe, so shallow and slow that Leon could barely detect the rise and fall of his chest beneath the thin blanket covering his body. For a moment, he feared that Cloud wasn't breathing at all and reached out to touch his slightly parted lips, the warm breath on his fingertips startling him from his trance. Realizing what he was doing, he quickly pulled his hand away and glanced at the door, afraid of finding Aerith there watching, but of course she wasn't.

Shaking his head at his own foolishness, Leon stood up and gently pulled the covers away from Cloud's too thin, but well-formed body. His wing was folded under his back and beneath his left arm, and Leon wondered if it was comfortable like that, but had no idea what else to do with a wing. He lightly ran a fingertip along its outer edge; it was soft and leathery, like his old jacket had been, and surprisingly warm.

Again he pulled his hand away and reached to the nightstand instead, getting a cotton ball from the glass jar and the vial of potion beside it. After saturating the cotton ball with the healing liquid, he carefully dabbed the two sutured slashes across Cloud's stomach. They were an angry red, but they were clean and showed no further sign of infection.

His attention was then drawn to the faded scar just above the fresh wounds, and he wondered if it too had been caused by the Masamune, for it appeared to have been made with a very thin blade, and he knew that magically healed wounds usually left no scar. He also knew that there was a matching mark on Cloud's back where the steel had exited his body; he had seen it earlier when they were checking his back for injuries.

The man had been skewered; half an inch higher and it would have been straight through the heart.

No, not the man, for the scar was quite old. He must have been but a boy at the time.

Leon stood for a long moment just staring down at the younger man, discomfited by the foreign fascination he felt for this stranger in his bed. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was something he was missing – something important, right here in front of him – but he refused to put his finger on it.

He gently replaced the covers around Cloud's body and then settled back in the chair, closing his eyes with a weary sigh. Soothed by the sound of Cloud's soft breathing, he gradually matched its rhythm with that of his own.


	2. Secrets of the Cetra

**۵۵۵۵۵**  
-Chapter Two-  
Secrets of the Cetra  
**۵۵۵۵۵**

It was late afternoon of the following day, and Aerith was still stationed at her bedside post when Leon entered his room for a fresh change of clothing. He and Yuffie had spent most of the day fighting Heartless, and he was in sore need of a shower; he ached all the way down to his bones. He wondered if he was getting too old for this job.

No, he quickly dismissed the thought; even Yuffie was completely worn out. She hadn't made it past the living room couch. Leon rubbed at his scar and frowned.

In addition to an increase in quantity of the usual varieties, a new breed of Heartless had appeared, and they had proven exceptionally difficult to take down. Neither he nor Yuffie had been able to discover any weakness, so they had stopped by Merlin's on the way home to see if he knew anything, but he had never heard of them either. He promised to check all his sources and get back to them later.

Leon walked over to the bed and watched as Aerith tenderly treated Cloud's wounds. Everything except a couple of exceptionally deep bruises and the two sutured slashes had already healed completely, and even they looked much better. But there was no other outward change in Cloud's condition, and despite her forced optimism, it was obvious that Aerith was worried. She looked up at Leon and smiled sweetly anyway. "You did such a good job with these stitches, Leon. There should hardly even be a scar."

Leon gave no acknowledgment of the compliment, choosing to direct the conversation towards Cloud instead. "He heals fast."

Aerith took a deep breath and released it slowly, carefully composing her thoughts as she set the vial of potion back on the nightstand. Talking about Jenova was like opening a can of worms; she had to be careful not to let any of the slimy little things slither out. If she slipped up at all as she wove her way discreetly through the facts, Leon would likely catch it, and would be sure to call her on it. She had already made her first mistake by mentioning Jenova to begin with. Funny, she always figured it would be Yuffie who let it slip, or possibly Cid ... but certainly not her.

She had been too distracted yesterday by her concern for Cloud, but as soon as the odious word had slipped from her mouth, she had known – from the slight furrowing of Leon's brow – that it would only be a matter of time until he asked her about it. Honestly, the man would go to great lengths to avoid discussing anything personal, but if it was facts he was after, he wouldn't let go till he had them.

Well, no use crying over spilt milk, Aerith supposed, _or_ worms; what was done was done, and it was up to her to fix it before he asked Cid or, heaven forbid, _Yuffie_. She took another deep breath and tossed out the bait. "Yes, that's Jenova's regenerative ability. Unfortunately, " she added with a sigh, "it won't give him the will to wake up."

Sure enough, Leon bit. He sat down on the edge of the bed, next to Cloud's feet. "What's Jenova?"

Leon had been given the abbreviated version of their struggle against Sephiroth, the same version that Avalanche had given everyone outside their inner circle back on Gaia, including an account of Cloud's past which was based, more or less, on the story which he himself had first told them in Kalm; it left out a lot of the details, not to mention the truth. And they didn't mention Jenova at all.

It was so much easier to simply leave Jenova out of the equation altogether, to point the finger at Sephiroth as the sole evil entity and leave it at that, because Jenova was the thread that unraveled all of Cloud's secrets. And they all guarded those secrets out of respect for their friend.

It wasn't difficult to do – to leave Jenova out of the tale. There weren't many people who had known about Jenova, and fewer still who had known the truth. Only Shin-Ra's top executives and the scientists involved in the Jenova Project had even been aware of Jenova's existence, and they had believed her to be an Ancient.

The Ancients had known the truth, of course, but they were all dead.

Professor Gast had learned the truth from Aerith's mother, Ifalna, the last living full-blooded Cetra, after leaving Shin-Ra, but they were both dead.

Hojo had discovered the truth from Gast's reports in Icicle Inn, but had he shared those reports with anyone else, or had he kept them to himself? Had President Shinra been told the truth, or was he still blindly seeking the Promised Land? Who would ever know? President Shinra was dead. Hojo was dead.

Rufus certainly hadn't known about the reports – not until the Weapons began to move in the Crater – and besides, Rufus was dead, killed by one of those Weapons.

There was Lucrecia, but Lucrecia was as good as dead, sealed away in her crystal cave.

And what about the other scientists and assistants who worked with Hojo after Jenova had been moved to Midgar? Had they known what they were dealing with when they helped Hojo carry out his heinous experiments? Maybe, maybe not, but it didn't matter anyway; they were all dead. Everyone on the 67th floor had been slaughtered.

Scarlet? Heidegger? Who cared. Dead.

The Turks might have known – Tseng and Elena, Reno and Rude – but even if they did, they would never tell; they were _Turks_. Whatever secrets they knew would go with them to their graves – well, with the possible exception of Elena – once they too were dead.

If they weren't already, that is...

The SOLDIERs certainly hadn't known about Jenova. _Zack_ hadn't known. They had all been lied to. Deceived. _Betrayed_. Who would willingly allow themselves to be injected with evil-alien cells? Zack had eventually figured it out, but not until later, much later, _too_ late. And then he was dead.

Not even Sephiroth had known – not until that fateful day in Nibelheim, and even then, he still hadn't known the truth. The reports in the basement of the Shinra Mansion still claimed that Jenova was an Ancient; Hojo had never amended them. No, Sephiroth hadn't learned the real truth until he fell into the Lifestream... Or was pushed... Or jumped. Cloud's memories of that part were a bit hazy.

That just left the members of Avalanche, and after it was all over, after Sephiroth was defeated and Meteor destroyed, they had decided there simply wasn't anything left to be gained by the truth. The truth would only cause Cloud further shame, and the one thing they all agreed on was that Cloud had suffered enough. Even though he had freely admitted the truth once he learned it for himself, they knew it wasn't something he was proud of – losing his own identity and being manipulated by a madman – so they chose to remain silent and leave the truth buried in the Northern Cave.

And when people mistakenly assumed from the glow in his eyes that Cloud had been in SOLDIER, they just didn't bother to correct them. They were, after all, Cloud's secrets to tell.

Aerith knew more of those secrets than anyone else, but then she was ... Well, she was _supposed_ to be, anyway. Aerith had her own secrets to tell, and it was time to tell Leon. She folded her hands neatly in her lap and reluctantly started her story.

"Jenova was an inert life form discovered by Shin-Ra's top scientist, Professor Gast," she stated as stiffly as a child reciting a particularly unpleasant school lesson. "Believing he had found the remains of an Ancient, he excavated the body, named it Jenova, and began the Jenova Project.

"The goal of the project was to foster Cetran abilities in people by injecting them with cells taken from the inert life form," she continued. "Gast hoped to restore the Cetra race, not realizing, at least not in the beginning, that President Shinra's only interest was in creating someone capable of leading them to the Cetra's fabled 'Promised Land' – a land believed to be rich in easily accessible Mako.

"The project was a failure," Aerith sighed, relaxing a little as she got into the telling of the tale, "in that none of the recipients ever demonstrated any Cetran abilities. But they did manifest two other characteristics which were also of interest to Shinra: strength and regeneration. Together with his two associates, Hojo and Lucrecia, Gast developed a procedure for enhancing Shin-Ra's soldiers with those characteristics, making them stronger and more resilient. That procedure consisted of injections of Jenova cells combined with infusions of Mako. Thus was Shin-Ra's elite SOLDIER force created."

"So the professor's theory wasn't entirely wrong," Leon summed up; "he just didn't get the expected results."

"Exactly." Aerith waited, knowing that Leon had most likely already arrived at the logical conclusion.

"So Jenova wasn't an Ancient."

"Right again. Jenova was a viral life form carried to our planet by a meteor. It was the Jenova virus that decimated my ancestors," she said sadly. "Thankfully, the few who survived were eventually able to seal it underground, where it remained for two thousand years."

"Until Professor Gast unearthed it," Leon added wryly.

"Yes, well..." Aerith shifted in her seat. "He became increasingly racked with guilt for performing such unethical experiments, but continued under pressure from President Shinra. Hojo and Lucrecia, however, suffered no such compunctions. They had no respect for the sanctity of human life." She sighed. "Not even that of their own child."

Leon arched a brow, urging her to elaborate, and Aerith complied. "They offered their unborn child to the project, injecting it with Jenova cells while it was still in Lucrecia's womb. The alien DNA melded with that of the fetus and grew right along with the child's own cells."

"And the result?"

"Sephiroth."

"Sephiroth," Leon echoed quietly. "And you think he's back."

"Yes." Aerith nodded.

"Sometime after Sephiroth's birth," she continued with her story, "Gast finally succumbed to his guilt and left Shin-Ra, moving to the area where he had discovered Jenova to continue his research independently. There he met my mother, and through her, finally learned the truth, but he was murdered by Hojo before he could attempt to rectify his mistake.

"Professor Gast was my father," she added quietly, then fell silent as if waiting for Leon's reaction, but she really should have known better.

Leon was fairly certain that in the bewildering world of polite conversation, a response was required, or at least expected, and Aerith's silence seemed to confirm it. So he searched through the paltry supply of platitudes he had collected over his twenty five years of limited social interaction for something appropriate, but couldn't find anything that didn't sound stupid.

Even a simple sorry was far too vague and open to misinterpretation. Sorry for what? Sorry that that her father had been killed? Or sorry that the man responsible for unleashing a madman upon their planet had been her father?

No, words could not be trusted. They were treacherous and often led one astray. You could start out on the most innocent of paths only to end up somewhere you never intended to go, mired knee deep in muck. Numbers were so much better; clear and precise, each and every one of them. They never left you dangling in ambiguity.

And there were only ten of them, zero through nine, and with those ten little digits you could build any number you needed, each just as clear and precise as the last. They marched along in a straight, well-mannered line, one after the other, and you always knew exactly where you stood – which number was in front of you and which one was behind.

Words on the other hand never behaved. They were like unruly children who pushed and shoved, or ill-mannered adults who cut in line. Half the time, they couldn't even decide whether they wanted to be a noun or a verb or an adjective, so they solved the dilemma by being _all_ of them.

And there were thousands and thousands of them, most of them with numerous different meanings, and each different meaning held several different shades of nuance that could change from region to region, even from one sub-culture to the next. Hell, even down to the family unit itself, words could have subtle differences in meaning. It was a wonder people were able to communicate at all.

A rose was a rose _might_ be a rose, or it could be a carnation, depending on who you were speaking to, but one was one no matter where you went.

Aerith finally realized that not only was Leon _not_ going to respond, but that she had lost him altogether, and that he was, in fact, no longer even part of the conversation. With a sigh and a gentle tap on the hand, she pulled him out of himself and back into the world of the socially competent.

"You honestly believe that Sephiroth's regenerative ability is powerful enough to resurrect him?" he asked.

It was Aerith's turn to hesitate then as she carefully weighed her response. She really didn't want to get into the whole issue of Reunion for the fear that it would lead Leon to too many questions – questions such as what effect it had on the Jenova cells in Cloud's body. It was one thing to leave false assumptions uncorrected, and another altogether to tell out and out lies. Aerith was uncomfortable enough with the first and flat-out refused to engage in the second. No, she would just have to hope that her answer sufficed without bringing up Reunion.

"Yes," she finally answered, "due to the fact that the genetic material from Jenova fused with Sephiroth's own cells. If SOLDIERs gained regenerative ability from a fixed dose of inert Jenova cells, can you imagine what an entire body composed of living cells would be capable of? That incredible regenerative power, along with a will strong enough to keep his self-awareness intact in the Lifestream, could give Sephiroth the ability to restore his body."

Again Leon raised a brow, this time conveying skepticism and a note of challenge. "So no matter how many times he's killed, he just keeps coming back?"

"Well ... theoretically, I suppose ... as long as Jenova cells exist ... I don't really know," she admitted. "Cloud's already killed him twice." With a look of utmost affection, Aerith gazed down at the sleeping man and softly stroked his cheek. "Let's see what he has to say when he wakes up."

A strange and uncomfortable feeling began to well up in Leon as he watched – one that he was unfamiliar with, though he thought he knew its name. But as to why Aerith's display of affection for the other man should make him feel _jealous_ was beyond his comprehension. He had no romantic interest in Aerith.

He had known of her feelings for Cloud since her arrival into his life, indeed her very first words to him had been a desperate inquiry for her lost friend. _'Have you seen a man with spiky blond hair and blue eyes?'_ she had asked. And she had never _stopped_ asking, of every new refugee that showed up, and imploring Sora to look for him in his travels to other worlds. Now, here he was, and suddenly Leon felt jealous? It just didn't make any sense.

It was probably because he himself was alone, Leon reasoned – because the three friends from Gaia had the good fortune of finding a fourth companion from their world, whereas Leon didn't have even one. But that didn't make much sense either; after all, Leon preferred to be alone.

He realized that Aerith was speaking again and gave her his attention, grateful for the distraction from his uncomfortable feelings and confusing thoughts.

"– something else I need to tell you ..." she was saying, the hands which had been folded so neatly in her lap now clasping one another tightly, "... before Cloud wakes up. He won't understand – when he sees me, he won't understand …"

Leon tried hard to be patient, to give her time.

She took a deep breath and tried again, the words beginning to tumble out of her mouth. "I would have told you before – I _wanted_ to tell you before, and I _tried,_ but I was just so afraid ... I didn't want you to feel different about me – I –" She looked down at her hands as if they might hold the words she sought. When they didn't, she began to wring them.

"Aerith," Leon sighed, losing the battle with his patience. "Just tell me."

"I shouldn't be here," she confessed, hands returning once more to her lap in calm resignation. "Sephiroth killed me – while we were chasing him – he killed me."

Leon didn't even bother to _think_ about making an attempt to come up with an appropriate response for that one.

"So you see," Aerith said, "I _know_ that it's possible to come back from death. And I _know_ that Sephiroth has returned also, because I was there _,_ in the Lifestream, when he left it.

"So I used the power of the planet's life force to come back. I didn't mean to stay; I just wanted to warn Cloud and the others, and then I was going to go right back. But the world just disappeared, _Cloud_ just disappeared – right in front of my eyes, and I never even got the chance ..." Aerith buried her head in her hands. "Now I don't know how to go back."

" _Oh,_ " Leon said, suddenly recalling a conversation shortly after Aerith's arrival in Traverse Town. They had been sitting at the kitchen table when, out of the blue …

**۵۵۵۵۵**

"What do you think will happen when Sora closes the door to Kingdom Hearts?" Aerith asked.

"I don't know," Leon answered.

"I know you don't know," she persisted. "I want to know what you _think_."

"I _don't_ think about it."

"Well, then think about it now," she insisted in an uncharacteristically irritated tone.

To which Leon had responded in his characteristically irritated tone, "Why don't you go ask Merlin? He knows a lot more about that sort of thing than I do."

"I already did."

"And he said?" Leon prompted.

"He didn't know," she muttered glumly.

Leon rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling a large headache looming. "Why don't you just tell me what's really bothering you," he said, knowing he was sure to regret it.

"Well, it's that report that King Mickey mentioned," she said. "You know, the one that says when the door is sealed, the walls separating the worlds will return?"

"That's just Ansem's theory, Aerith. No one knows for certain."

"Well, I don't like to think about never again seeing the friends that I've made from other worlds."

"Then don't think about it," Leon offered helpfully.

Aerith sighed. "Wouldn't you miss us at all?"

"Whether or not I would miss you isn't going to change the outcome," Leon stated, but it evidently wasn't the answer she wanted, for she turned on him with her very best set of puppy-dog eyes. It wasn't a fair tactic, knowing his weakness for puppies, but she and Yuffie regularly employed it on him anyway, and it never failed to work.

"Fine. I would miss you," he grumbled. "Does that really make you feel any better?"

"A little." She smiled at him gratefully, but whatever was eating her wasn't yet sated, because she was still twisting her napkin into a tight little knot. "So, what do you think happens to a planet's Lifestream when the planet disappears?" she blurted out.

"Lifestream?"

"The life force of the planet. You know, Spirit Energy. Mako. What did you call it on your world?"

"No, I _don't_ know, and we didn't."

"Well, where does your spirit go when you die?"

"How would I know that?" he scoffed, becoming more and more apprehensive of getting trapped in a spiritual discussion with Aerith – definitely not where Leon wanted to go.

"You don't know?" she asked.

"You do?" he countered.

"Well of course," she exclaimed. "Every man, woman and child on our planet knows that! ... _Knew_ that," she corrected herself. It still hadn't fully sunk in that every man, woman and child on the planet was probably gone.

"And they all agreed?"

"What's not to agree on? The Lifestream could be seen and touched, even used – why do you think we were fighting against Shin-Ra? Because they were depleting the planet's life force by converting it into electricity."

"Oh," Leon said. He hadn't realized when they told him that Shin-Ra was sucking the life out of the planet, they had meant it _literally_.

"Why, some people have even fallen into the Lifestream! And some people, like me, can hear it."

"And just what is it you hear?" Leon asked with a wary glance. He was beginning to have his suspicions about _people like her_.

"The Lifestream is full of the knowledge of those who passed on before us," Aerith explained. "It holds the wisdom of every life lesson ever learned, all the thoughts and feelings, the dreams and regrets; kind of like a giant melting pot of memories." She laughed. "All life is born from the Lifestream and returns to it upon death, enriching it with its own knowledge in turn.

"My ancestors, the Cetra, or Ancients as they were called, had the ability to communicate with that collective consciousness, even direct it to a certain extent, but I am only half Cetra; I can hear the voice of the planet, but it's often confusing, and I can't always understand what it's saying."

"Well, there was no Lifestream on my planet. And there's nothing like that here," Leon pointed out.

"I know." She sighed. "But I thought it was just Traverse Town, because _none_ of the normal rules apply here. Still, surely, all planets must have a Lifestream, even if it isn't apparent. Perhaps it was only obvious on Gaia because of the Cetra," she mused.

"Even now, I sometimes hear ..." She seemed to change her mind mid-sentence and shook her head. "It's just too hard to tell; the worlds are so far away." She fell into a pensive silence, but just as Leon was about to get up and leave, she suddenly perked up again. "What about magic?" she asked, deciding to approach the subject from a different direction. "You used magic on your world, right? Where did it come from?"

"Well ... we drew it from other people or creatures, mostly," Leon answered, "but there were also places it could be drawn directly from the earth."

"You drew it?"

"Through the junction of a Guardian Force," he explained. "Anyone could learn to use para-magic – like I can still cast fireballs, and you can use healing magic – but without the aid of a Guardian Force, it was hardly worth the effort. It took extensive training, and even then, it couldn't compete with the strength of regular weapons. And you know how draining it is. But by junctioning with a Guardian Force, we were able to use powerful magic without depleting our own energy."

"A Guardian Force?"

"A Guardian Force, or GF, was an entity from another plane, and it was possible to form a bond with them in your mind. All GFs had the inherent ability to draw, store and use magic, and by bonding with them, you not only gained access to those abilities, but also the ability to call on them to aid you in battle, as well as the capacity to bolster your own strengths and resistances."

"Beings that you summon from another plane?" Aerith exclaimed. "Like Ifrit or Shiva?"

"You know Ifrit and Shiva?"

"Yes, but we called them Summons, and they didn't live in our brains."

Leon resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the thought of Bahamut or Eden actually residing in his brain and explained that it was more like a mental link. "The connection feels like a tingle in your forehead," he attempted to clarify, "like a buzz, or a low grade electrical shock. Especially Quezacotl; he downright sizzled. It's difficult to describe if you've never experienced it," he added with a shrug. Still, to Aerith's delight – and disbelief – amazed to be having an actual two-way conversation with Leon, he continued to try.

"They all had their own individual sensations. It could be pretty distracting at first, but you got used to it after a while. Ifrit felt like a blast of hot air, like stepping from an air-conditioned office into a hot summer day, whereas Shiva... Shiva felt like an ice-cream headache." He chuckled softly.

Well, it wasn't exactly a _chuckle,_ it was more like a one-sided smirk accompanied by a small expulsion of air and a soft snort, but it was about the closest thing to an expression of humor that Leon seemed to possess. A faraway look of affection deepened his slate-colored eyes to a smoky blue. _Shiva. She had always been such a struggle to keep._

He had a greater natural affinity with Quetzacotl, but Zell had adored the great Thunderbird – even had a stylized lightning bolt tattooed on his face in homage to his beloved Quetzy – and in spite of Squall's reputation, he didn't have the heart to take the GF from the blond. Besides, Squall preferred Shiva – needed her numbing chill, her cool detachment. He had loved her since the first time he junctioned her at the age of eleven. Shiva's feelings for him, however, had not been the same, not in the beginning, at least.

Cerberus had liked him from the start, and Diablos had taken to him like white on rice (and he really didn't want to think too hard on the implications of _that_ ), but Shiva hadn't wanted anything to do with him. Perhaps she had sensed the fire that flowed through his veins, the passion he had always struggled to suppress. Bahamut had sensed it, there in the Deep Sea Research Center, and so had Ifrit, coming to him so quickly in the Fire Cavern that day. But Squall hadn't wanted Ifrit's fire, didn't like it, and neither did Shiva, so he had given Ifrit to Seifer as soon as they reached Dollet.

He stayed away from fire magic altogether and stocked as many ice spells as he could carry. He summoned the glacial goddess constantly and learned how to bury his own emotions behind a wall of ice as solid as Shiva's Diamond Dust. It had taken months and months of unremitting determination – and a lot of luv-luv-gs – but eventually, he had won her over. After that, they had become inseparable, and she refused to junction with anyone else.

Shiva's Lover, people began to call him – or Shiva's Bitch, by Seifer. And Ice Princess, just to piss him off – just to prove that he _could;_ that no matter how hard Squall tried to quell the fire within him, Seifer could always make it burn.

Shiva had her own endearment for him as well – _Little Lion_ , she had whispered to him in the quiet of the night – and he had made the mistake of believing that she had come to truly care for him in return. But when his world fell, she had left him, and it had hurt almost as much as losing his world. Maybe more, for she had taken her gift of ice along with her. Now, without the aid of his Guardian Forces, the only magic he was still able to control was fire – a mocking testament to his true inner nature.

In the end truth will out, so they say.

Well, so much for two-way conversations with Leon, Aerith sighed, realizing that she had lost him. "On Gaia," she said, hoping to lure him back from wherever he had gone, "we linked to Summons and magic through the use of Materia, which was a crystallized, condensed form of Mako. It contained the knowledge of the Ancients and was a direct link to the Lifestream, allowing the user to harness the power of the planet."

"So, you're saying that we're talking about two different methods of channeling the life force of the planet?"

"Exactly. And those places you mentioned where magic could be drawn directly from the earth? They sound a lot like Mako fountains. Mako fountains were places where the Lifestream erupted from the planet's surface," Aerith explained. "They were one of the few places that natural Materia could be found."

The moments ticked by, and Aerith was beginning to suspect that she had lost Leon to his own thoughts yet again, when he looked at her and asked, "You said that memories are absorbed by the Lifestream?"

"Yes, prolonged exposure to Mako erases memories from the mind until, eventually, even the person's very self-awareness is lost. Only the very strong willed can withstand it for long."

"Sustained use of Guardian Forces resulted in memory loss," Leon stated. "The longer you were junctioned, the stronger the link became and the more extensive the loss. We assumed that it had something to do with the neural connections necessary for memory recall being overwritten in order to maintain the link with the Guardian. But maybe it had something to do with the energy being channeled through the mind as magic."

"Well, that would make sense," Aerith agreed. "If your GFs served as the means to channel the life force, like Materia did for us, it stands to reason that the connection could erase memories. Luckily for us, Materia didn't channel the energy through our brains.

"So..." She circled back to her original question. "Now that we've established its existence, what do you think happens to that life force when a planet disappears?"

Leon shook his head. "I'm sorry, Aerith, but I just don't know. You're the one who can hear the voices of the planets. What do they tell you?"

Aerith stared out the small kitchen window, contemplating the star-filled Traverse Town sky for a long moment before finally turning back to Leon. "The only thing I hear anymore," she said with a sorrowful smile, "is cries."

**۵۵۵۵۵**

... "So that's what's been bothering you," Leon said, returning to their present conversation, his tone surprisingly gentle. "You've been worried all this time about returning to the Lifestream."

"Yes," Aerith admitted, "and I feel so guilty. I've misused my powers as a Cetra, using Spirit Energy that wasn't meant for me. I need to go back, but I don't know how, and even if I did, I'm _afraid_. I don't want to end up in the wrong Lifestream.

"You see, I think that all the Lifestreams are connected, separated by barriers which break apart when the planet dies, just like the barriers between the worlds have broken down due to the Heartless. But if the Lifestreams of all the planets that have disappeared are all mixed up together now, what will happen when the worlds return?"

" _If_ the worlds return," Leon corrected. "But does it really matter, if it's all the same Lifestream?"

"It matters to me," she said. "I want to return to Gaia's Lifestream, because the memories of my ancestors are there, and the spirits of people I love. I wouldn't want to get stuck in, say, Traverse Town's Lifestream."

"I can't blame you there," Leon said dryly. "You'd have to hang out with the mayor for the rest of eternity."

Aerith laughed in spite of herself; nobody could stand the mayor.

"But it seems to me," he continued in a more serious tone, "that if the worlds do return, then their Lifestreams would return along with them. Everything would go back to where it belongs, in which case, so would you. And if things _don't_ go back to the way they were, there won't be anything you can do about it anyway. So why don't you just stop worrying and enjoy the extra time you've been given."

Aerith smiled at Leon gratefully, feeling lighter than she had for many months. In spite of his reluctance to get involved in other people's problems, Leon always seemed to have a way of making things better.

With a stiff roll of his shoulders, Leon stood up and walked to the dresser to gather his clothes and go take his shower. "And for whatever it's worth," he offered, pausing in the doorway, "I don't feel any different about you."

Though that wasn't entirely true, he thought, crossing the hall to the bathroom; his admiration and respect for the young woman had grown immensely. Leon hadn't even been able to make it back from time compression to save his own companions. Aerith had made it all the way back from death to save hers.

  



	3. Cloudy Skies and Stormy Eyes

**۵۵۵۵۵**  
-Chapter Three-  
Cloudy Skies and Stormy Eyes  
**۵۵۵۵۵**

Cloud could feel himself drifting in darkness, floating slowly towards consciousness as each gentle wave of awareness washed him closer to the edge of sentience and light. He cracked open an eye and warily glanced about at what he could see without moving his head, but recognized nothing as the room gradually came into focus.

He became aware of another presence in the room, and the vague memory of grey eyes flittered across his mind, but he couldn't be sure if they had been real or only dreamed. Cautiously, he turned towards the person beside him, hoping, for no apparent reason, to find the one who belonged to those eyes. What he found instead was even more surprising.

" _Aeris?_ " And another memory flashed through his mind: He was back in the lab, on Hojo's table, with the glaring overhead lights and the needles and _pain_ ; and he panicked, believing himself to be dead because Aeris was there. But there was somebody else there as well, and it _wasn't_ Hojo; it was the one with grey eyes, and then suddenly everything was all right.

Cloud lost hold of the memory, or vision, he wasn't sure which, when he realized that Aeris was speaking. He caught random words, plucking them from the lilting stream that flowed from her mouth, but his mind was unable to arrange them into any meaningful order. No, he realized; he couldn't be dead. He had been in the Lifestream before, and while just as confusing, it was nothing like this.

"Where am I?" he asked, to which she had answered, 'Traverse Town' – more words with no meaning – and Cloud looked around for the grey-eyed angel, hoping that maybe he could explain. He attempted to push himself up from the bed, but an unexpected wave of pain stopped him cold. He looked down at the source and saw two neatly sutured slashes across his stomach.

"What happened?" He tried another question, slowly maneuvering his body into a more upright position.

"You were badly injured," Aeris answered.

Yes, he could see that. "How?"

"We don't know. We were hoping _you_ could tell _us_. Do you remember anything at all? Do you know how you got here?" She answered his question with more questions.

He shook his head. "I don't even know where _here_ is."

"You're in a place called Traverse Town, at Leon's house," she said, as if that explained anything at all. "He's the one who found you." She pointed to Cloud's injuries and added, "He's the one who stitched you up."

Cloud glanced around the room again, for guidance perhaps, or clues, and tried to sort things out in his head as Aeris prattled on about Leon, whoever that was, but it was all too confusing. He still didn't understand where he was, even though Aeris had just told him, and he couldn't figure out for the life of him – or the life of Aeris _–_ why she was here. _Hadn't she died_?

But Cloud could never be too sure of anything. There was always the possibility that things weren't the way he remembered. There was even the possibility that _he_ wasn't who he remembered.

Or perhaps she was merely a vision – Cloud sometimes had visions. He suspected they were the result of spending too much time in the Lifestream, absorbing knowledge and memories that weren't _his_ , overdosing on Mako and surviving it. Now, sometimes he saw things, and other times he just knew things, like a sixth sense of sorts, but it was often confusing, and he couldn't always tell what was real, or what belonged to him. It was a strange world to live in, his world.

At any rate, there seemed to be holes in his memory again, and god only knew what was missing. Or this might just be some sort of trick, he decided; it wasn't like he'd never been fucked with before. Maybe it would be better to just wait for a bit and watch. Maybe then he'd be able to figure it out. He turned his attention back to Aeris, who was still talking about Leon. She sighed and abruptly fell silent.

She knew she was babbling, avoiding the question she could see in Cloud's eyes, filling up the awkward space with words. There were things that needed to be said: questions that had to be answered and others that had to be asked; she just didn't want to do it. But she had been down that road before, and she knew where it led.

She and Tifa had both tried to pretend that everything was fine, ignoring the truth they felt in their hearts, and she couldn't help but wonder how much _they_ were to blame for the things that had happened – the things Cloud had done while they were chasing Sephiroth.

She knew that Cloud blamed himself and no other, but Aerith suspected that the truth of it was that if they had just _said_ something, if they had had the courage to confront him with their suspicions, that maybe things would have turned out differently. They had been so afraid he would break, but he had ended up breaking anyway – under Hojo's and Sephiroth's lies, and her and Tifa's silence – and they had all paid the price. Cloud had sure as hell paid. Aeris had paid too. She wasn't about to go there again. She took a deep breath and touched him lightly on the hand. "You must be wondering why I'm here."

"A little," he mumbled with a wary glance.

"It's all right." She gently took his hand in hers, allowing him to feel the warmth of her skin, the pulse of life that flowed through her veins. "It's really me," she assured him, "though I go by Aerith now."

At Aeris– _Aerith_ 's – words, he risked a more daring, direct look. She _appeared_ to be real. She _felt_ real.

"I came back to warn you that Sephiroth had left the Lifestream. Do you recall running into him lately?"

"Sephiroth? No." He shook his head and added, "Should I?"

Aerith pointed to his stomach. "It's just that your injuries ... well, we suspect that …"

At her words, Cloud really looked at his wounds. It was clear they had been razor sharp and just as thin, wounds which should have healed quickly with magic, and the fact that they hadn't was telling. Even with sutures, the cuts were just beginning to scab over, and they formed a perfect X on his midriff. A mark – yes, the Masamune.

"What about Vincent?" Aerith tried next. "Have you seen Vincent recently?"

When Cloud nodded yes in reply, Aerith's face brightened briefly before falling again at the words which followed. "I was just with him – at the reunion."

"Avalanche's six month reunion at Seventh Heaven?"

Cloud nodded again, confirming Aerith's fears. "Why?" he asked, and added, "What's wrong?" when he noticed the look on her face.

"That was almost a year ago."

"I've been unconscious for a year?"

"Well, no – I mean – I don't know. You've only been _here_ a few days. We don't know where you were before that." Aerith searched his eyes but found nothing helpful. "What _is_ the last thing you remember?"

"The reunion ... Vincent and I had just– "Cloud clenched his eyes and sucked in a breath, a spasm of pain racking his body as another vision flashed through his mind: Aeris again, reaching for him, screaming his name. Then, just as suddenly, the vision was gone.

"Vincent and I had just walked outside with Yuffie and Cid," he began again, more measured. "Cid was going to give us a ride on his new airship – but I don't remember actually getting _on_..."

"That's because you didn't," Aerith said. "You and Vincent – this black, _portal thing_ just opened up behind you and –" She struggled to compose herself. "– and you were just _gone_."

"And Vincent?" he asked.

Aerith shook her head. "No one has seen him since."

"Well, I just turned up. Maybe Vincent will too," Cloud suggested hopefully.

"Maybe," she smiled weakly. "But when Leon found you, you were wearing his cape."

**۵۵۵۵۵**

Aerith still hadn't told him the worst of it yet – that their world was gone, and Tifa was gone, along with everyone else – but she didn't want to overload him with too much information at once. And while he was mentally digesting what she already fed him, she figured, getting up to go to the kitchen, she would give his stomach something to work on as well. "Why don't I get you something to eat, and we can talk some more later. The others should be back soon."

"The others?" Cloud asked. "Tifa? Marlene?"

"Leon and Yuffie," Aerith answered.

"Oh." Cloud nodded, wondering again who Leon was, and why Yuffie and a resurrected Aeris – _Aerith,_ he corrected himself again – seemed to be living with him. This just kept getting stranger and stranger. "Who _is_ Leon?" he asked. _Someone_ _else he had forgotten?_

"Leon is the man who took us in when we first got here," Aerith patiently explained again. "He's a wonderful person, even though he tries really hard not to show it. We would have been lost without him. You know, in a lot of ways he reminds me of you ... but you'll meet him soon enough for yourself. Now, what would you like to eat?"

"What I'd really like is a shower." Cloud attempted to run his fingers through his dirty hair and grimaced at the sticky, tangled result.

Aerith tried to dissuade him from getting up until he was stronger, or at least until Leon got home and could assist him, but Cloud insisted that he was fine. Knowing he could be almost as stubborn as her taciturn housemate, Aerith didn't bother to argue and simply held out her hand for support. When she was satisfied that his legs would hold him up, she grabbed the clothes that Leon had left out on the dresser in case Cloud awoke, and led him across the hall to the bath.

"Feel free to use whatever you need," she said, setting the clothes on the top of the toilet. "I'm sure Leon won't mind. Towels are in the closet, and he keeps extra toothbrushes in that drawer." She pointed out the location of the basic necessities and then turned to leave the room, throwing over her shoulder, "Just give me a shout if there's anything else you need."

Cloud thanked her and closed the door behind her, grateful for a little time alone to gather himself. He turned on the shower and, while waiting for the water to get hot, looked around the small room. Everything was very neat and clean, and judging from the lack of personal items, he would have thought it a guest bath had Aerith not implied that it was Leon's. Cloud turned to open the medicine cabinet and froze.

The haggard face staring back at him would have been more than enough to send him into shock, but that was far from the worst of it. Coming slowly out of his daze, he turned sideways and looked over his shoulder to get a better look at his back in the mirror.

Yep, he was dead all right. Dead and in Hell. Why else would he have a wing – a _demon_ wing?

No, he couldn't be in Hell, he told himself. He had no problem believing that _he_ had been cast into the pits of purgatory, but what would Aerith be doing here? And somehow, Cloud didn't think they would have nice hot showers in Hell.

Besides, Hell wasn't a real place – he knew that. It was just a literary construct, an allegory. A place made up by mean-minded people to keep their kids in line. _Still_ …

In some obscure, unilluminated corner of Cloud's mind, it was just as real to him as the monster under the bed. It didn't matter what anyone said; he _knew_ it was there. There were voices in those shadowy corners, and they spoke to him.

Besides, it made sense, didn't it? Surely, the Lifestream wouldn't let just any old body in. It wouldn't want evil, corrupt people like Hojo or worthless fuck-ups like Cloud mucking up its stream of consciousness. Wouldn't people like that have to go somewhere else first, to be _fixed_ before being allowed on the exclusive list?

I mean, think about it. What if the Lifestream wasn't invitation only? What if it did allow every idiot on the planet in, like some indiscriminate guest list. What a hell of a party that would be. Right. Hell. Precisely the point; You wouldn't want the Lifestream and Hell getting all mixed up together, now would you?

_'Whoa, Spike. You're getting in way too deep there, buddy. Lighten up a bit.'_

_'Zack? I thought you were gone.'_

_'Well, thanks a lot, Spike. Are you trying to say you don't want me around?'_

_'No, of course not. It's just that I haven't heard from you in a while.'_

_'Well, of course I'm still here. You can't get rid of me that easily, my friend. I've just been sleeping.'_

Well, of course, he was still there, Cloud scoffed at himself. It was only his conscience speaking, after all. It was just that Cloud's conscience happened to sound a lot like Zack, and it insisted on calling him Spike. Cloud wondered if everyone's inner voice was so cheeky.

And that other voice – the one that spoke to him from the dark corners of his mind and whispered through his veins in an alien tongue.

Or that strange, blue man who lurked in the shadows with Hojo. Who the fuck was he?

_'Watch your language, young man. I raised you better than that.'_

_'Sorry, Mom.'_

His mother had more or less teamed up with Zack, and they tended to hang out together in the lighter places of his mind: The Conscience Committee. Cloud wondered when he had started thinking in obscenities anyway, speaking to himself with foul language. Had Cid crawled into his mind as well, while he was sleeping?

Cloud supposed his mind was a lot like the Lifestream; it seemed to have an indiscriminate guest list of its own. Things had been pretty quiet the last time he'd checked, but evidently, someone had decided to start up the party again while he was out.

So. There were _gaping_ holes in his memory. A whole year's worth. Well, at least it wasn't _five_.

Cloud took a deep breath and turned back to the medicine cabinet, where he found shaving supplies and deodorant, a couple of bottles of various potions and a large bottle of aspirin, and one entire shelf devoted to dental hygiene products. Well, at least this Leon character had clean teeth, he snickered to himself.

He stuck his hand in the shower to test the water, adjusting it slightly before stepping out of his filthy, blood-stained boxers and getting in. One would think that after everything he had been through, he wouldn't have any modesty left, but the fact that he was still wearing his own boxers was comforting, and Cloud had learned to appreciate the small comforts in life. In his experience, being unconscious and naked in the presence of strangers didn't generally bode well.

He leaned back under the soothing stream of hot water, letting it wash away what was surely the entire last, lost year's worth of grime, rejuvenating his body and lifting his spirits a bit. When he reached for the shampoo, its subtle scent brought with it another memory:

_An intense stab of pain jolted him awake. Disoriented, he instinctively started to struggle, then realized he was being carried in muscular arms. Thinking it was Zack, he looked up to find a man with long chestnut hair and stormy grey eyes instead, but even though he didn't know who the man was, nor where he was being taken, Cloud wasn't afraid. The man's body was warm and his scent oddly comforting; he smelled ... familiar. Then he spoke, and his voice, although rough, was calm and sure, and Cloud allowed himself to settle back into the shelter of the stranger's arms..._

Leon.

Cloud finished washing his hair and then the rest of his body, taking extra care with his wounds and his wing, and wondered about Leon – apparently, his grey-eyed angel.

He dried himself off and got dressed in the clothing that Aerith had given him, assuming that it too must be courtesy of Leon, who, judging from the fit, must be about an inch or two taller, because the pants were just a tad too long. And the t-shirt was just a tad too roomy, but that was good because it accommodated his wing, which he folded up neatly underneath.

**۵۵۵۵۵**

The Heartless had continued to increase in both number and strength for the past few days; since the day he found Cloud, to be exact, Leon realized with a start, but he was far too busy at the moment to ponder any possible connection. Yuffie and he were attempting to clear Second District, but the Heartless kept spawning in as fast as they could take them out. They were currently fighting in the area outside the Gizmo Shop, which had become a particularly bad spot lately, with high concentrations of "Blue Flames", as they had taken to calling the new Heartless due to the emblem on their chests. Their main portal into the district seemed to be near the entrance to the alley, not far from where he had found Clou–

This second disturbing realization caused Leon to stop dead in his tracks until Yuffie's cry of "Leon, duck!" snapped him back from further speculation. With agile reflexes and natural grace, he twisted at the waist and leaned back, dodging her shuriken just as it flew past his head with a soft _'hwhiz'_ and found its mark in the Air Soldier hovering behind him.

Despite how annoying the young girl could be, Yuffie was a damn good fighter, and Leon had been glad to have her by his side on more than one occasion. He acknowledged her assistance with a curt nod, then turned on his heel to take out a Yellow Opera before it could hit them with another thunder spell, while Yuffie finished off the last lowly Shadow.

With the wave of Heartless defeated at last, the two fighters stood catching their breath as they awaited the next incoming round. When it didn't come, they moved once more down the alleyway, which they had already cleared at least a dozen times or more. Finding it still free of Heartless, they returned to Gizmo Square, and it too remained clear.

"Well, I guess that's it then," said Yuffie.

"For now," Leon agreed, and they headed for home.

**۵۵۵۵۵**

Feeling considerably more human after his shower, Cloud stepped back into the bedroom just as Aerith finished changing the sheets. As soon as she saw him, she started up a light-hearted stream of chatter and began walking towards the living room, with Cloud following silently behind. He knew she was making small talk for his sake, and he genuinely appreciated her effort, but wished she would just be quiet. There was something she wasn't telling him, and the small talk wasn't helping at all.

They both stopped short at the sound of the front door being opened, and then a black-haired blur came flying across the room and wrapped itself around his neck. Aerith was scolding her not to tackle the injured man, but her voice was full of laughter. Cloud couldn't take his eyes off the man in the doorway.

Leon, his grey-eyed angel, in the flesh.

Only he was no angel. He was a man through and through, strikingly handsome and sexy as hell. His presence was commanding – powerful and compelling – yet there was a steadiness beneath it, a quiet self-possession, and Cloud understood instantly that here was a man people would follow. The attraction he felt was immediate and absolute, and he found himself walking towards the other man as if drawn by an irresistible force.

Then he was there, face to face with the eyes from his visions. Only these eyes were intensely alive, full of integrity and intelligence, and Leon's composed, unemotional face was betrayed by their passionate potency. They were also bluer than the eyes from his visions, an icy blue that glittered within the grey, but there was something else there as well, and it puzzled Cloud. It almost looked like ... _fear_.

It was the same sort of look that Cloud had seen on the faces of foes in that split second of time between the realization that their own death was imminent and the delivery of the killing blow, and for one brief moment, he almost thought the man was going to turn around and run.

**۵۵۵۵۵**

Leon had excellent instincts. Years of military training followed by years of living with constant danger had finely tuned his natural ability to sense threats to his well-being, which is why he was currently frozen at his front door: When seized by a sudden, absurd reluctance to enter the house, he listened to his inner voice.

Senses on full alert, Leon scanned the room for danger, seeking the source of his unease. The laughing girl in pink was certainly no threat, nor was the squealing blur that was flying across the room towards the– there ... the man in slightly oversized pajama pants and baggy shirt. No, that was just Cloud, standing there in Leon's clothes; he wasn't a threat. So why was his heart racing?

Leon watched as Cloud awkwardly returned the young girl's hug, responding to her exuberant greeting with a softly spoken "Yuffie," in a calm and mellow voice, and gently removed her arms from around his neck. Then Cloud looked over at him, and Leon's stomach threatened to desert the sinking ship. His mouth went dry.

Cloud had obviously just come from the shower, his skin still flushed with a rosy glow, and his freshly washed hair now framed his face with spikes of softly shining gold. His lips were full and pink, and his eyes ... his eyes were the most amazing blue that Leon had ever seen, and they _glowed_. _Cloud_ glowed.

Leon knew he was staring, but he couldn't seem to make himself stop. Nor could he have uttered a word, even had he _wanted_ to, because his stomach was now lodged firmly in his throat. It was ridiculous and irrational, but that didn't stop the adrenaline from pumping through his veins, preparing his body for fight or flight as long-unacknowledged emotions, dangerous and unwanted, swirled just below the surface. He struggled to keep them suppressed, but flight didn't seem like such a bad option either, and for one brief moment, he almost turned around and ran.

But of course he didn't. He was a SeeD, Rank A. The Lion of Balamb. Commander of Garden. He had taken down Ultimecia without a flinch. This was only a man.

He had wrestled Ruby Dragons, beheaded Behemoths. _Devoured_ T-Rexaurs.

He had flown to the moon and leapt into space, had been flung to the future, hurled through the past, and catapulted through corridors of darkness to another world. This was only a man.

Swallowing to dislodge the lump in his throat, Leon calmly and deliberately stepped into the room, setting his gunblade on the small rack near the door and casually removing his gloves. Then Cloud was there, right there in front of him, and hesitantly holding out his hand.

Leon didn't really like to shake hands, especially without his glov- ( _and when the hell had he removed his gloves?)_ but he knew it was a formality that had to be endured. Not that he cared much for formalities either...

But Leon had grown up at least; he wasn't the rude young man he once had been – he wasn't _Squall –_ so he managed a small nod in exchange for Cloud's uncertain half-smile and raised his own hand in response, finding the contact surprisingly pleasant. Cloud's hand was slender, but solid and warm, and his handshake was firm, callous to callous, eyes locked warrior to warrior, and for once, Leon was not the first to let go.

Then Aerith was there, pulling Cloud to the couch and protectively patting his hand while proceeding to name off twenty different things she could fix for him to eat, but Cloud was having a hard time paying attention because his gaze kept returning to the man who was now leaning against the wall, with his long, lean, black-leather legs and those damn belts which drew the eye directly to that which they failed to hide well enough underneath.

He kept trying to tell her that he wasn't really hungry – just a glass of water please – but Aerith wasn't listening and finally just made the decision for him, stating her intention to make some cream of wheat as she jumped up from the couch and went to the kitchen.

Yuffie was bouncing around the room and then bounced out the door to go fetch Cid.

Leon shared a look with Cloud, earning a small, one-sided smirk from the blond, which for some silly reason made Leon feel happy. Then he pushed himself off the wall and followed Aerith into the kitchen, treating Cloud to one of the most wondrous sights of his short little life – Leon's beautiful backside. Leon returned a few moments later and handed Cloud a glass of water, then resumed his post on the wall, and thus it was that the two men found themselves – alone together, in the room, with nothing to say.

It was Cloud who eventually made the effort, not because the silence between them was particularly uncomfortable, but because he didn't want Leon to leave. He searched for something that didn't sound stupid, finally finding a topic suitable for two stoic warriors when his eyes landed on Leon's unusual weapon. "Interesting weapon," he said, grateful to have something to focus on other than the sinfully sexy man leaning against the wall. "I've never seen anything like it."

"Gunblade." It was the first word that Leon had spoken, and to him, it sounded harsh and grating compared to Cloud's mellow voice. But Cloud remembered the deep, husky voice from his dreams and thought it suited Leon well, now that he matched it to the man. It oozed with sensuality, just like the man himself, and Cloud looked for a way to prolong the conversation just to hear it again.

It turned out to be unnecessary, however, when Leon made an effort of his own. "They weren't common on my world either." He paused a beat and then added, "I put your sword in the bedroom."

Cloud studied the glass of water in his hands for a moment before taking a sip, and then acknowledged quietly, "I understand I have a lot to thank you for."

"Forget it," Leon said, dismissing the debt with a wave of his hand. "You would have done the same."

"Maybe." Cloud shrugged. "But I won't forget it."

Cloud was just about to ask what Leon had meant by his odd – and rather ominous – comment about _'his world'_ when Yuffie returned with Cid, and Aerith returned with cream of wheat, and they all started talking at once. Leon watched with amusement as the three of them fussed over their long-lost friend, and when the beleaguered blond turned to him with a plea for help in his beautiful blue eyes, Leon found the corner of his own mouth curling up in a one-sided smirk.

It never even crossed Cloud's mind as odd that he had looked to the only stranger in the room for help.


	4. Welcome to My Nightmare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title belongs to Alice Cooper.

۵۵۵۵۵  
-Chapter Four-  
Welcome to My Nightmare  
۵۵۵۵۵

"So where in the hell've ya been, ya spiky-headed nutcase, and what in the hell'd ya do with Vince?" Cid wasted no time and minced no words; he hadn't been there for more than five minutes before diving right in. Aerith shot him what was intended to be a discreet 'Cid, please!', but Cloud intercepted it anyway.

"It's all right, Aerith." He set the untouched bowl of cream of wheat on the table next to the couch and cast a quick glance at Leon before turning to Cid. "I don't remember," he mumbled.

"The last thing he remembers is the two of them standing outside Seventh Heaven with you and Yuffie," Aerith elaborated.

"Holy shit," Cid replied and sat down at the living room table. "So your memory's all fucked up again, eh kid?"

Aerith fired off another, more intense, look at the tactless man – which was basically the same as the 'Cid, please!' look, only without the 'please' – and while she was nowhere near as good at it as Leon, her second attempt succeeded in shutting him up. He looked at her and furrowed his brow, indicating Cloud with a subtle cant of his head.

_'No,_ ' Aerith frowned, wordlessly answering his unspoken question, _'I haven't told him everything yet.'_ She sat down on the couch next to Cloud, and Yuffie joined Cid at the table. Leon continued to hold up the wall.

A stifling silence settled over them then, making everyone uneasy – even Cloud, who was generally okay with uncomfortable silences. The only one who seemed completely unaffected was Leon. Cid muffled a cough, and Yuffie squirmed in her seat. Aerith wished she hadn't made Cid shut up.

As the tension in the room became almost unbearable, a strong premonition washed over Cloud, leaving a sense of dread in its wake, that his life – the life he was finally coming to terms with, making his peace with – was about to be turned upside down yet again. He looked from face to face for confirmation, but everyone looked away, refusing to meet his eyes.

Everyone except Leon, that is. Leon held his gaze steady, and it was Cloud who finally looked away, ashamed of looking so weak in front of the other man – just like he had with Zack; he remembered that well enough. But Vincent and black holes? Cloud didn't have a clue. Leon must think he was a real nutcase, just like Cid said. Cloud glanced at him again, but there was no sign of judgment or pity on his handsome face.

"So is anybody going to tell me what's going on?" Cloud asked, finally breaking the awkward silence. "Where are we? And please don't say Traverse Town," he directed at Aerith.

Everyone automatically turned to Leon then, as if by means of some secret ballot, they had unanimously elected him spokesman, and Cloud listened intently as the man gave a terse account of what had happened since Ansem began seeking the darkness. Some of the tale stirred shadowy memories – things like the Heartless and Sora – but he couldn't quite grab hold of them before they had flitted away, leaving only a vague discomfort behind.

"Our world vanished that day," Aerith said gently, "right after you and Vincent."

Cloud thought back to the day of the reunion, which to him seemed like just yesterday. Vincent had arrived bearing reports of strange new creatures in the Nibelheim area, and Cid had confirmed them, recounting an incident that had recently occurred in Rocket Town. A group of rock climbers had gone on a trip to the nearby Nibel Mountains, and only one of the four had returned, his clothing in tatters, and babbling deliriously about deadly shadows.

Of course, Cloud and Vincent had both immediately suspected sinister goings-on at the Shinra mansion again, even though Hojo was dead and Shin-Ra defunct, or perhaps some sort of malfunction at the Mt Nibel reactor again, even though it had been shut down for months. So they decided to go take a look around, and Cid had offered to give them a ride on his strange new airship; not out of the goodness of his heart, he had insisted, but because he was also giving Yuffie a ride back to Wutai, and it would give the pest two other able bodies to bug for a good portion of the trip.

"So the rumors of those shadows in Nibelheim, they were these Heartless creatures?" Cloud asked.

"Yeah. Little fuckers," Cid muttered.

"They must have found their way into the Lifestream through the Nibel Reactor," Aerith added, "and from there to the heart of the planet."

"And the people?" Cloud looked to Leon for the answer.

"I really don't know."

"No one knows for certain what happens to the people when a world disappears," Aerith stated, and then once again the room descended into silence.

And once again, it was Cloud who broke it. "So, the three of you got here on Cid's ship?"

Aerith nodded. "Right after you and Vincent vanished, everything turned to chaos. The Lifestream erupted all around us, and thousands of creatures started spewing from the ground. It was as if the planet was trying to cleanse itself of the darkness, but there were just too many, too much darkness, and then everything just started ... the planet just started breaking apart, and we didn't ... we couldn't ... there wasn't any time!" Aerith cried. "The world just disappeared, and we couldn't even –" The words caught in her throat and refused to be uttered aloud, still the awful weight of them hung in the room just the same, an unbearable burden on every heart there.

_We couldn't save them, couldn't save anyone._

After a moment to regain her composure, and a few deep breaths, Aerith began again. "Cid pulled me on board his ship just as everything was disappearing, and we ended up here – just the three of us. But we were lucky," she added softy, glancing at Leon with a bittersweet smile. "At least we have each other. And now you're here too!" She threw her arms around Cloud and buried her face against his strong shoulder.

Cloud awkwardly patted her on the back, uncomfortable with her unusual display of affection and uncertain how to handle it, but not wanting to hurt her feelings. He looked to Leon again for moral support and was surprised to see a slight scowl on the man's face. Then he realized; of course – Aerith and Leon. God, he was stupid. The last thing he wanted to do was give Leon the wrong impression or come between him and Aerith, so he gently pried her away.

"There's still a chance that the others could turn up, right?" he asked. "I mean, I just turned up." His question was met with an assortment of head shakes, shoulder shrugs and frowning faces. "Well, Vincent anyway. Are you sure it was his cape I was wearing?"

Aerith got up and quietly left the room, returning several moments later with Vincent's ragged cape. "And there's this too," she said, handing him Vincent's glove.

Cloud stared at the familiar gauntlet in his hands, gently fingering the golden claws, and ran his hands over the worn fabric of Vincent's red cape, as if the objects themselves might telepathically convey the whereabouts of his missing friend. When they failed to do so, he sat and simply frowned at he floor for a while, but when it refused to yield any answers either, he once again turned to Leon.

"Couldn't the others just be on some other world?" he asked. "Traverse Town can't be the only place where people end up. After all, I've been somewhere else for a year."

Leon shrugged, his stoic expression suggesting 'Who knows?' or even 'Who cares?', but his eyes belied his indifference, and when he spoke, his voice was gentle. "Traverse Town is the only such world that we know of, but you're right; there could be others, and the fact that you've just turned up gives me hope." The way it was said made Cloud wonder if there was someone who Leon was looking for, someone important he had lost.

"And you, Leon?" he asked. "How did you get here?"

"The same way that you did," Leon answered. "Through the Corridors of Darkness." Then he shoved off the wall and left the room, giving the four reunited friends some privacy to speak among themselves of their lost world.

۵۵۵۵۵

By the time Leon rejoined the others after a long, relaxing soak in the tub, Cloud had fallen asleep on the couch. The girls were watching TV, and Cid was still sitting at the table, reading the paper. Leon picked up the bowl of cold cream of wheat and carried it into the kitchen, dumping the contents into the trash. Then he rinsed off an apple and proceeded to eat it, standing at the kitchen sink and watching out the window as a couple of Shadows prowled around the stairs leading down to the third district courtyard – which reminded him...

While fighting Blue Flames this morning, he had noted a few additional details and wanted to get them down on paper while they were still fresh in his mind. He tossed the apple core into the trash to join the cream of wheat and went to his bedroom to get his supplies.

All of the cadets at Garden had been required to take classes in drawing – it sharpened their powers of observation, as well as hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills – but Squall had honestly enjoyed it, found it relaxing, and had continued with the hobby even after completing the required courses. He was surprisingly good at it too, and during his eight years in Traverse Town, had accumulated quite an impressive collection of sketches. Most of them were of people and creatures from his home world, lest time erase their memories from his mind, but there were many illustrations of Heartless as well, with notations in the margins regarding things such as weaknesses and types of attacks, as well as what sort of loot they were likely to drop.

With his pencils and paper in hand, Leon returned to the living room and sat down at the table across from Cid, opening his sketchbook and flipping through the pages until he came to the rough sketch he had started the evening before. After a moment of reflection, he began to work on a detail of the emblem on their chests: Rather than the usual insignia found on artificially created Heartless, these new Heartless sported an upside down heart composed of two overlapping blue flames, the tips of which came together at the top to form the heart's point. Smaller red flames decorated the interior of the heart in what appeared to be a stylized design of wings.

After he was satisfied with his illustration of the emblem, Leon returned to the rest of his drawing, adding a few minor details here and there and fleshing out the body a bit, which was similar in shape to those Search Ghosts that had begun to appear in Traverse Town a few weeks back, only smaller and faster and harder to hit. Also similar were the Blue Flames' hands, which were disproportionately large for the rest of their body, but thinner than those of the Search Ghosts, with long, bony fingers and sharp, elongated claws. Unlike the Ghosts, the Blue Flames' head and torso was wrapped in ragged bandages, and their skin, rather than a pale, ghostly white, was flushed a soft red, like the glow of dying embers. But the biggest difference between the two was the pair of black, leathery–

Leon abruptly put down his pencil and looked over at Cloud, who was lightly twitching in his sleep. Then he looked back down at his drawing. Of course, he couldn't actually see the wing beneath Cloud's shirt at the moment, but he knew–

The similarities were striking.

It was just a coincidence, he told himself. Just a coincidence. All demon wings looked alike, right? Still he couldn't stop himself from staring at the man on his sofa. He tried to return to his drawing, but could no longer concentrate on the image in his head, and after a few half-hearted attempts, gave up even the pretense of interest.

Satisfied that everyone else was fully absorbed in their own activities, he turned to a fresh page in the back of the book and began to sketch a much more interesting subject. Thus it was Leon who was first to notice when Cloud's face tightened into a grimace of pain, and the light twitching of his slender body escalated to violent jerking. Locked in the throes of a nightmare, Cloud's obvious anguish rapidly intensified, along with Leon's concern, and just as Leon was closing his pad and rising from the table, Cloud bolted upright off the sofa.

۵۵۵۵۵

As everything went black and the room began to spin, Cloud reached out blindly for something with which to steady himself, latching onto the end table lamp and pulling it over with him. He slammed into something solid and thought he had hit the floor, but quickly realized that while firm, it wasn't painfully hard, and furthermore, it was warm. Then the low rumble of a deep voice telling Aerith to take the lamp rolled through his body like far-off thunder, and Cloud realized with a rush of heat that the warmth at his back was Leon. Strong arms were wrapped tightly around his torso, holding him steady, and a solid chest was pressed firmly against his back, hot breath on the back of his neck.

It didn't help with his vertigo at all.

Still, Cloud slowly regained his balance, and the room stopped reeling as Leon lifted him into his arms. Still somewhat disoriented, Cloud wrapped his own arms around Leon's neck and instinctively turned his face towards the warmth of Leon's scent. He smelled like home – like fresh air and pine trees and the sweet, rich earth of old forests, like evergreen and musk. It was a comforting smell, like his mother's rosemary bread baking in the oven, and Cloud had to fight off an overwhelming urge to simply bury his face in the crook of Leon's neck and take a deep breath.

Silken hair brushed his cheek as Leon lowered him to the couch, and calloused hands caressed his back as Leon gently slipped his arms out from under him. Cloud relaxed his hold on Leon's neck and let his hands slide down the length of Leon's arms, over soft leather and hard muscle and warm skin until they came to rest on Leon's forearms, and there they lingered a little too long. But as Leon began to straighten up and pull away, Cloud let go, even though something inside of him very much wanted to tighten his grip and pull Leon closer. And something in Leon, deep and well guarded, answered, and he hesitated just long enough for a look to be exchanged; fleet, but full of meaning.

Unfortunately, neither man understood that meaning.

Then Aerith was there, fussing and fretting, and Cloud reluctantly tore his eyes from Leon's; they were dark slate now, with no hint of the ice that had been in them earlier. "I'm okay, Aerith. Really, I'm fine," Cloud insisted. "I just got up too fast."

"Well no wonder!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. "You've lost a lot of blood, and you haven't eaten anything in days!" And with that she was off again to the kitchen.

Cloud returned his gaze to Leon, who was just watching him silently, and once again something was shared. Leon knew that Cloud's explanation wasn't entirely the truth, but he kept the man's secret as if it were one of his own.

۵۵۵۵۵

After putting away his art supplies, Leon returned to the living room and just stood there, trying to decide what he wanted to do, torn between watching the evening news with Cid and Cloud, or helping Aerith in the kitchen. He often helped out in the kitchen, not because he particularly enjoyed cooking – though he didn't really mind – nor because he particularly enjoyed helping Aerith – though he didn't really mind that either – but because he was fussy about his food, and Aerith tended to prepare dishes that were too heavy for his tastes. Having a hand in the preparation was the easiest way to ensure there would be something healthful on his plate.

Leon had always been a picky eater, preferring fresh foods that were simple and light. And natural – the less processed, the better, to his way of thinking. Having grown up near the ocean, the fresh seafood was one of the things he missed the most in Traverse Town: the raw oysters and fresh shrimp, the fish right off the boat.

He had once heard someone joke that if you couldn't pronounce the names of the ingredients in something, then you had no business eating it. Well, not only could Leon pronounce the multi-syllable names of those synthetic substances, he actually knew what most of them were, and he knew you had no business eating them.

Like all those boxes of artificially flavored, instant, precooked, processed stuff on grocery store shelves proclaiming to be food. There was no way in hell that crap was going into his body. Or like the hot dogs that everyone at Garden would die for; they were simply _appalling_. He'd rather eat worms. At least they were natural, and full of protein rather than parasites and preservatives.

When Leon was younger, when he was still Squall, he would have looked down on Aerith for the foods that she loved – the biscuits with gravy, the potatoes and dumplings – but Leon wasn't as rigid as Squall had once been. Rinoa had loosened him up just a bit. During their mission to take out Edea, they had seen the ragged street urchins in Deling, seen their hungry eyes and empty hands searching through the trash bins behind fancy restaurants for the rich, and Irvine had made the mistake of making some flippant remark about filthy little sewer brats. Rinoa had heard it and lit into him with the wrath of the righteous.

At the time, Squall had thought it was nothing more than sanctimonious show from the pampered little princess – the General's daughter playing a role to irritate Daddy – but as he got to know her better, he realized that her sentiment was sincere. She had a thing for people without, be it freedom or food didn't matter; her tender heart bled for them all. Her charity extended in like measure to those who were politically oppressed, socially downtrodden, or economically deprived. She had a nose for lost causes and was drawn to them as unerringly as a pedigreed bloodhound.

Leon sometimes wondered if that was what had drawn Rinoa so determinedly to him – another lost cause: the emotionally bereft.

She had made him understand how different food was for those who didn't have any, and how a skinny little kid could turn into an overweight adult doomed to die of heart failure from a lifetime of living on flour and fat. It was all they had, all they could afford, and somewhere along the line, it became more than mere food; it became comfort. They learned to comfort themselves with the very foods that would kill them.

Aerith had grown up in the slums.

She had once told Leon about her flower garden back in Midgar and how she had sold the flowers on the street to buy food. When Leon asked her why she hadn't just grown vegetables instead, she only laughed, green eyes twinkling with an inner knowledge, and said, "Sometimes it's more important to nourish the soul, silly."

Well, Leon didn't know the first thing about nourishing the soul, but he knew quite a bit about nourishing the body and tried to gently steer her towards healthier choices. And though he still didn't care much for the meals she prepared, he didn't look down on her for the things that brought her comfort. Indeed, he had even learned to respect her resourcefulness; there had been a particularly difficult time in Traverse Town a few months back, with too many people and too little food.

The town's food had to be brought in from neighboring worlds, of course, for things don't grow in perpetual darkness. Leon wondered what they had done before the barriers between the worlds had broken down, but there was no one in Traverse Town who could remember that time; everyone here had come from somewhere else. Even the mayor, who had been there the longest, couldn't remember how the town had come to be. He wasn't even sure how _he_ had come to be, nor could he remember how he had come to be Mayor. Leon suspected that he had come from that weird Wonderland world next door; nobody had all their marbles over there.

Merlin believed that the town had simply sprung into being when the other worlds began to disappear, solely as a landing place for survivors: It sucked up the living debris of lost worlds like a hungry black hole – sucked up stray people and spit them out here, in this dark corridor crossroads, this barren realm of in-between, saved from an expeditious death to waste away slowly. They had been graciously spared the fate of their fellow homeworld inhabitants only to find themselves exiled to a world that couldn't even provide them with the basic necessities of life.

Cosmic irony. The universe had a twisted sense of humor.

Or perhaps they were all being punished.

Divine retribution? Or merely divine providence gone awry?

Well, thank god for Merlin at least.

When Leon had first arrived – back when the worlds were just beginning to blink out, and there weren't that many mouths to feed – Merlin had managed to provide for them all, poofing off to who knew where with his magic bag to do the weekly shopping. Leon was grateful, but there was only so much canned stew one could stomach. Evidently, Merlin didn't want to mess up his precious bag by hauling perishables.

But as more and more refugees began to pour in, it became too much for Merlin to handle, and it soon became apparent that a more permanent solution was needed, for contrary to popular belief, even magical bags have a bottom. Merlin left to seek council from the head of his order, Yen Sid, and returned a few days later in a very foul mood, muttering something about meddling and divine laws against disturbing the world order. In short, he had been expressly forbidden from interfering.

"What world order?" Leon had wanted to know, and promptly took matters into his own two capable hands, divine laws and misguided moral commandments be damned. From where he stood, world order looked a lot like utter chaos.

So he borrowed the strange little ship in which a small group of refugees had recently landed, along with its irascible captain, and flew off in search of a reliable source of sustenance. Within the week, he had established trade routes with two nearby worlds, convinced the captain to run a delivery service, and negotiated a mutually beneficial contract for all four parties involved. Fresh vegetables were back on the menu, and Merlin was off the hook.

Soon after, two of the more optimistic young refugees had seen the opportunity hidden within the gloomy situation and opened up businesses: one, a small grocery store, and the other, a modest cafe. Others shortly followed suit with clothing shops and jewelry stores, and soon there was a booming little town. With Heartless still being relatively scarce, munny had not yet become the accepted means of exchange, so a barter system was devised, and everyone provided what they could. But no one went hungry; it was an unwritten, unspoken, and uncontested rule.

Everything had gone quite smoothly for several years after that, right up until a few months back when both of the worlds they had been doing business with, along with a slew of other worlds, vanished overnight in a rash of disappearing worlds, leaving the town overrun with new refugees and its food supply gravely disrupted. Ships had been sent out to secure emergency provisions, but they had still suffered severe shortages for several weeks.

Leon would have been hard pressed to prepare even one meal for two from the meager supplies that remained, but Aerith had managed to feed the entire town for two weeks. It wasn't fresh ceviche from Balamb, but it had kept hungry bellies from growling and volatile tempers from flaring, averting a potentially disastrous situation. Leon had been genuinely impressed, and exceedingly grateful.

It was during that time that they first met King Mickey, who had shown up in a gummi ship, inquiring about something called a keyblade and its bearer. When he learned of the town's terrible plight, he offered to provide food and other supplies from his own world, which had an overabundance and was only a hop, skip and a gummi jump away. And it could all be done without meddling, since he and all of his trusted advisers were already aware of the existence of other worlds. After furnishing Leon with directions and a letter of introduction, the little mouse king had bid them farewell and flown off, beseeching them to please keep an eye out for the keyblade master.

Since then, the town's food supply had remained stable; Sora had turned up and started sealing keyholes, and Aerith had firmly ensconced herself in Leon's kitchen. He knew it gave her a sense of purpose, as well as something to do with her time, and he didn't have the heart to kick her out. Besides, everyone else seemed to love her hearty, down-home cooking. And even Leon had to admit she made a mean apple pie.

At any rate, Leon didn't know the first thing about Cloud's likes and dislikes, or the things that brought him comfort, so against his better judgment, he remained in the living room and left Aerith to her own devices. Sure enough, half an hour later, out she came with plates piled high with something that was breaded and fried, mashed potatoes loaded with butter, and everything smothered in gravy. It seemed she was determined to fatten Cloud up, all in one night.

۵۵۵۵۵

Leon and Yuffie had just finished clearing the table and were washing the dishes when there was a sharp rap on the door, followed by a blue flash of magic. Seconds later, to Cloud's surprise, a curious old man with a very long beard and a pointed hat popped into the room. Cloud glanced around to see if anyone else found it strange, but apparently, it wasn't an unusual occurrence. Aerith just smiled and waved at the peculiar little man, and Cid looked up from his paper and grunted. The man walked straight over to Cloud.

"Well, well, well. I see our young lad has awoken at last. I am Merlin," he said with a bow of his head, "at your service, young Strife. I have heard a great deal about you, my boy, a great deal, and I assure you, we are all most pleased to have you with us."

Cloud blushed a very pale pink and mumbled his thanks, looking up to find Leon standing in the kitchen doorway, drying his hands with the dish towel and watching him with an odd little smile. Merlin followed Cloud's gaze and turned towards the door. "Leon, there you are."

"Merlin," Leon greeted the wizard. "Did you find anything?"

"Not a thing, my boy, not a thing. I'm afraid there's nothing on these new Heartless in any of the record books. Perhaps Sora will know something about them when he returns. In the meantime, I've strengthened the wards on First District, as well as the one on this house. Hopefully, that will hold them off until we can figure something out.

"The waterway is also still protected, of course," he continued, "but I fear Second District is beyond control. I strongly advise against anyone setting foot in there alone – even you, Leon." And with another flash of light, he was gone, just as abruptly as he had come.

The rest of the evening passed peacefully with occasional bursts of conversation, but Cloud seemed little more disposed to speech than Leon, and his presence, Leon noted with satisfaction, seemed to have a calming effect on his friends. Cid and Yuffie didn't even argue – well, only once, and it was brief – and a sense of well-being settled over on the little house in Third District.

When it came time to retire at last, Cloud attempted to give Leon his bedroom back, but Leon refused to even discuss it. He insisted that Cloud still needed the bed far more than he, and Cloud was too tired to argue about it, which told him that Leon was probably right. So he bid the others good night and crawled into Leon's bed.

۵۵۵۵۵

Leon awoke sometime during the night, not as he usually did – robbed slowly of sleep by a throbbing headache – but with a start. Something was wrong and he quickly realized what: Cloud was having another nightmare.

He threw off the covers and hurried to the bedroom, finding Cloud in even worse shape than that afternoon. His hands were clenched at his sides as if bound by invisible chains, and his pretty face was distorted with pain. Soft whimpers turned to agonized moans, and his body began to shake. Leon leaned over him and lightly shook his shoulders, quietly calling his name.

Cloud's eyes flew open in a wild panic, and his hands shot to Leon's face, clawing at him in blind fear, but Leon reacted quickly, pinning Cloud's hands to his chest and leaning into him with the weight of his heavier body. Once the blond had returned to his senses, gradually relaxing beneath him, Leon loosened his hold and withdrew his weight, still leaning over the younger man with a look of deep concern in his eyes and a long red scratch on his face.

"Leon," Cloud winced, reaching again for Leon's face, but gently this time to lightly caress the mark he had made. "I'm so–" he began, but at the touch of his fingers, Leon jerked away. Realizing he had overstepped his bounds, Cloud dropped his hand and averted his eyes. "You shouldn't wake me when I'm dreaming," he stated more distantly. "I sometimes get violent."

"Whatever," Leon snapped, which only compounded his irritation with himself – for overreacting to Cloud's harmless touch in the first place, and in the second place, for the fact that he was irritated by his overreaction. He couldn't help it if he didn't like for people to touch him, and he certainly didn't need to apologize for it, or feel bad about it; it was just an automatic reflex – a deeply ingrained automatic reflex. He didn't normally even care.

He pressed the heel of his hand to the spot between his brows and heaved a weary sigh, attempting to shrug off the unpleasant sensation gnawing at his stomach. Though he really couldn't say why, he took a stab at being more amiable . "So, now I know. If it happens again, I'll be prepared."

"Right ... if it happens again ..." Cloud mumbled under his breath.

Leon gave him a curious look but said nothing more, merely turned and left the room, leaving Cloud alone to wonder.

۵۵۵۵۵

He wondered about Leon and Aerith. Once he had started looking for it, he had noticed the way Aerith looked at Leon, had seen the way her eyes lit up. There was no doubt in Cloud's mind that Aerith had feelings for Leon. He was less certain, however, about Leon's feelings for Aerith.

He didn't appear to have any, but then, Leon didn't appear to have any feelings at all; he was very good at hiding his emotions. And Cloud had a hard enough time deciphering people's feelings even when they hit him over the head like a two ton brick.

Yet when Aerith had been holding him on the couch that afternoon, Leon had seemed upset, jealous even.... And they _were_ living together, though they didn't seem to be sharing a bed.

Of course, perhaps that was just because Cloud was currently in it.

Then again, he and Tifa lived together too, so that didn't mean too much.

Nor had Cloud noticed any tender touches between them, but it was obvious, even to him, that Leon wasn't very comfortable with casual contact: the way he isolated himself, crossing his arms and his legs, closing himself off. And he certainly hadn't liked it when Cloud touched him earlier. Yet he had touched Cloud with a surprising warmth that left Cloud curious.

And that look, that spark buried deep in his eyes when he had lowered Cloud to the couch ... what had that been about? Cloud felt a pleasant flutter in his stomach at the thought.

Perhaps his touch had just caught Leon off guard, taken him by surprise. After all, touching someone was different than being touched, and if there was ever anyone who understood that, it was Cloud.

Why was he wasting his time thinking about this, anyway? It wasn't like it mattered. Sure, Leon was a very attractive man, but Cloud didn't know the first thing about him. He sure as hell didn't know if Leon liked men, and even if he did, it didn't mean he liked Cloud. He certainly didn't seem like the sort of guy to fall for a pretty face – not that Cloud thought he was particularly pretty, but other people seemed to think so, or so he'd been told.

No, whatever Cloud might have thought he had seen in Leon's eyes, and whatever he thought he had felt in Leon's touch were probably just the product of his own imagination, fueled by wishful thinking. He certainly couldn't trust his own perception of things; he had thought Zack liked him romantically, and boy, what a joke that had turned out to be. Yeah, he was still laughing over that one. Why was he even thinking about this? It was pointless.

He had made his life with Tifa, helping each other rebuild their broken lives and restore their damaged world. They all had their share of guilt; Meteor had only finished the job of destruction that they themselves had started. Blowing up reactors to save the planet had seemed like a good idea at the time, but none of them had understood how many innocent lives would be lost. Still, their ignorance and regret didn't bring those lives back.

Now they were all trying to do their part. Tifa was running the new Seventh Heaven they had recently opened in Edge, and Cloud was busy trying to establish a delivery service. Together, with the money they earned, they helped some of the many displaced children who had lost everything, and they also took care of Marlene while Barret was off searching for alternate energy sources. It wasn't enough to repay their debt, but it at least gave them enough purpose to get through the day.

It was only natural that he and Tifa had turned to each other after it was all over and Avalanche disbanded; neither of them had anyone else. And he did love Tifa, just not in the way she wanted him to. He had once thought he did, but that was a long time ago, and he wasn't the same person now.

Sometimes he wondered – if he hadn't left Nibelheim, if he had stayed there with Tifa. If he hadn't met Sephiroth, or Zack, if he hadn't– Well, what was the point of that?

The point was that he had left, and nothing had turned out the way he expected.

Still, life wasn't so bad. He was happy enough, he supposed. Happier than he deserved to be.

He still wasn't very comfortable – or competent – with social interaction, but it had gotten easier over time, and being with Avalanche had taught him that he needed other people. His odd little family of misfits had accepted him as he was, and the true Cloud, buried beneath years of physical, mental, and emotional abuse, had finally begun to shine through. He would never be as confident and upbeat as Zack – would never _be Zack_ , however much he might like to be – but once he had remembered who he really was, his own, more subtle brand of cockiness had returned.

His trials had left him a stronger man, mentally as well as physically – strong enough to beat Sephiroth in both body and mind – and he had friends who believed in him. But most of all, he was beginning to believe in himself. He had finally found a place in his world where he felt like he belonged.

And he had finally gotten what he had wanted so badly all those years ago; he had gotten Tifa. It just hadn't been what he thought it would be. The closeness and companionship were comforting, but the passion simply wasn't there. He had tried to please her anyway, because he genuinely cared about her, and he knew it was what she wanted, although he couldn't imagine why.

Besides, it wasn't like there was anyone else in his life, anyone he loved like that.

He had kept up the pretense for as long as he could, but Tifa had seen through it; she had figured it out long before he finally admitted the truth. Of course she hadn't been happy about it, but she had asked him to stay anyway.

It wasn't like there was anyone else in her life, anyone she loved like that.

No, passionate love was for fairy tales; romance was only for dreams. Friendship was much more reliable for everyday life, and he and Tifa were friends – good friends. So he had moved a small bed into the room he used as an office, and their lives had gone on.

Cloud supposed Tifa's life hadn't turned out the way she expected either.

Neither had Zack's. Nor Aerith's. Not even Sephiroth's, for that matter.

He wondered what Leon had expected from life. Somehow, he doubted that Leon's dreams for the future had included Traverse Tow–

And suddenly it all hit him, just like that, and his world came crashing down. He _didn't_ have Tifa. He didn't even know if she was still alive. He didn't have Seventh Heaven, or Edge, or Marlene. He didn't even have Fenrir. And what of the others? What of Barret and Reeve and Nanaki? And what about Vincent? Where was Vincent?

And where in the hell had he gotten that damned wing?

۵۵۵۵۵

Leon stared at the ceiling and kicked at the covers. He couldn't go back to sleep.

His head hurt, his face hurt, and his stomach felt funny. His pajamas were all twisted around his body, and the blanket was all bunched up. The couch was too lumpy, the house was too stuffy, the clock too noisy, and Cloud ... Cloud was far too quiet. He had gone into the bathroom an hour ago, and he hadn't made a sound.

Leon might have been able to disregard the the tick-tock-ticking of the clock, and he probably could have ignored the drip-drip-dripping of the kitchen faucet, but there was no way in hell he could drown out the nagging voice in his head.

What if something was wrong?

God, he really hated looking like such a mother hen, but the thought of another failure on his hands made him feel even worse. He had sworn on the memory of those he had failed to protect that he would never lose anyone else on his watch, so in spite of the fact that Cloud was probably getting tired of his excessive concern, Leon swallowed his pride and got up to go check on him. Again.

He found the bathroom door ajar, and Cloud was just standing there with his shirt removed, staring in the mirror at the wing stretched out over his shoulder. Leon knocked very lightly, but Cloud was obviously lost deep in thought and still didn't realize that he was there. He knocked again, slightly harder, and quietly called out, "Cloud?"

Cloud's eyes darted from his wing to Leon's eyes in the mirror, meeting them briefly before looking away in shame. "Sorry," he mumbled, tucking his wing against his back and reaching for his shirt. "You need the bathroom?"

Leon pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped into the room. "No, I just ... Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Cloud lied, blond spikes springing back into place as he pulled the t-shirt over his head. "Did I keep you awake?"

"No," Leon lied in return. He couldn't very well tell Cloud the truth – that he couldn't stop worrying about him. "I often have trouble sleeping." There, at least that much was true.

Cloud nodded in understanding, still struggling to get his shirt back on, which in his haste, had gotten hopelessly hung up on the pointed tip of his wing. Leon reached over to help him get it untangled, gently easing the soft cotton over the leathery appendage, and at the brush of his fingers, a quiver rippled through the wing, causing it to flutter in a strangely seductive manner. Despite the temptation to do it again, Leon dropped his hands and took a step back to let Cloud pass.

Cloud murmured his thanks as he turned and hurriedly left the room, hanging his head to hide the flush he could feel spreading across his face – from the embarrassment of not even being able to dress himself without Leon's help, and from the heat of Leon's hands.

He returned to Leon's bed with the aftershocks of Leon's touch still racing through his body and the memory of Leon's breath on the back of his neck sending tremors down his spine. When he remembered the feeling of Leon's arms around him tightly, a deep, sweet ache swept over him like wildfire. It was a fire he hadn't felt in years.

Passion.


	5. Is It Soup Yet?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title brought to you by Lipton®

**۵۵۵۵۵**  
-Chapter Five-  
Is It Soup Yet?  
**۵۵۵۵۵**

It was almost noon by the time Leon heard the toilet flush. His blond charge was finally awake and the awareness of that fact brought a nervous flutter to his stomach. He stirred the pot of soup on the stove and listened for footsteps.

Cloud emerged from the bathroom a few moments later, still groggy with sleep, and plodded towards the kitchen on bare feet, lured there by the smell of something cooking. Expecting to find Aerith, he was surprised to find Leon instead. He slid into a seat at the table and attempted to stifle a yawn. "Where's Aerith?"

"Laundry with Yuffie."

"Oh. And you got stuck babysitting," Cloud joked, only half in jest.

"Beats laundry," Leon bantered back.

Cloud nodded a wholehearted 'amen to that' and attempted to stifle another yawn.

"Would you like some coffee?" Leon offered.

Cloud noted the empty carafe on the counter and shook his head in reply, adding a hasty, "But thanks," lest his mother wake up and remind him of his manners. Then they both fell back into silence, having evidently already exhausted their entire repertoire of small talk. Cloud absently traced the swirls on the Formica tabletop, and Leon returned to stirring the soup.

When Cloud gave his upper body a good stretch a few minutes later, extending his arms up over his head and arching his back, Leon couldn't help but notice his wing straining beneath his shirt. Thinking that it must be uncomfortable all cramped up like that, he fished a small paring knife out of the drawer and cut a vertical slit in the back of the shirt, then carefully eased Cloud's wing through the opening.

It was really a rather small thing in his hands, all folded in on itself, and very soft and pliable, but at the warm touch of Leon's hands, it began to swell and grow firmer as Cloud expanded it fully. "Well, that was _curious_ ... " Leon stammered, "... almost like–"

"Erectile tissue," Cloud stated, but he didn't seem to be speaking to Leon. His attention was focused inward, and his head was cocked to the side, a look of intense concentration on his face.

Leon flushed and quickly dropped his hands. "Like a butterfly. I was going to say 'like a butterfly'."

"Yes. Like a butterfly ..." Cloud echoed Leon's words, but again Leon got the feeling that Cloud wasn't speaking to him; he appeared to be having this conversation with himself. In a distracted tone of voice, as if repeating words he could hear in his head, Cloud continued, "... but unlike a butterfly's wings, which harden and dry, my wing remains flexible because the tissue is similar to ... well, uh ..." he trailed off as he suddenly became aware of what he was saying – and that he was saying it _out loud_. "Somebody told me that," he mumbled, glancing up at Leon with a look of confusion and a very fetching blush on his face. He dropped his eyes and added, mostly to himself, "But I have no idea _who._ "

Compelled by a curiosity that overpowered his normal restraint, Leon hesitantly ran a finger down one of the prominent ridges that formed the frame of Cloud's wing. It was sturdy, but flexible, like cartilage rather than bone. "Is it sensitive?" he asked when Cloud shivered in response.

"Yes, and no. Sort of like the sole of your foot: tough, yet tender at the same time."

Leon repeated the light stroking motion, and a tremor skittered across the surface of Cloud's wing, rippling the black satin sheen like a gentle wind on still water. Entranced by the reaction, Leon braved another, bolder stoke. "Does it tickle?"

"It isn't exactly a tickle ..." Cloud closed his eyes to concentrate fully on the feeling of Leon's fingers. "It's more like a tingle ... or a prickle," he said, searching for the right word to describe the unusual, but definitely not unpleasurable, sensation. Then the memory of Leon holding him flooded his body with heat, and he stated decisively, "Like a breath on the back of your neck."

Snapping to his senses, Leon dropped his hand again, determinedly this time, and took a step back, realizing that he really shouldn't be touching the man in such an intimate manner. He didn't even _know_ the man; his fascination with his beguiling appendage couldn't possibly be healthy.

Dismayed by Leon's abrupt withdrawal, Cloud retracted his wing in shame. "I probably shouldn't leave it– I mean, I don't want to–"

"We've all seen your wing, Cloud. Nobody cares."

"Well, as long as you're sure you don't mind. It _is_ more comfortable this way."

"I don't mind," Leon assured him, returning to the soup on the stove. He filled a small bowl and set it down in front of Cloud, then filled another bowl for himself and sat down on the opposite side of the table. Cloud was still just staring at his soup, and Leon had to swallow the ridiculous urge to hand him his spoon and tell him to eat. He picked up his own spoon and filled his mouth with soup instead.

No wonder the man was so thin. He hadn't eaten more than a couple of bites since he got here, and he didn't look like he'd been eating all that well for the past year, either – wherever he'd been.

As if following Leon's lead, Cloud dipped in his own spoon and took a small taste, testing it to make sure it wasn't too hot. Finding it just right, he put the whole spoonful into his mouth, and then another, and another; it was soothing and warm and – "Mmm, s'good," he said and finished the whole bowl before speaking again. He wiped his mouth and looked pointedly at Leon. "So ... you know how to cook."

"Enough to get by," Leon allowed.

"And you babysit." To which Leon replied with a skeptical look.

"And we know that you're at least familiar enough with laundry to know it's a pain in the ass." Which drew a hesitant nod from the puzzled brunet.

"Do you clean as well?" Cloud asked, which earned him an actual verbal response, complete with a roll of blue-grey eyes and a self-degrading snort.

"Compulsively," Leon answered.

"So how have you managed to remain single?"

Leon glanced theatrically around the room, then leaned forward in his seat with a conspiratorial glint in his gunmetal eyes. "I got Merlin to protect me with a 'ward against women'," he whispered.

Cloud chuckled right out loud at that and got up for another bowl of soup, wondering in the back of his mind if that also worked against _men_. "Yet here you are, living with two of them," he pointed out as he returned to his seat, still chuckling softly, eyes sparkling like two shimmering pools of clear, blue water – like someone had captured a couple of drops of heaven to save for a rainy day. "Perhaps Merlin needs to work on his magic a bit."

Now, conversation was never an easy thing for Leon, but he found it almost impossible with those captivating eyes so close and the breathy sound of Cloud's soft laughter casting a spell of its own. He was experiencing, first hand and up close, the charisma of Cloud Strife, and he began to understand the adoration his housemates felt for the man. He finally succeeded in formulating a response and stated triumphantly, "Yes, but they're not in my bed."

"No." Cloud smirked. "That honor seems to have been given to me."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized how suggestive they sounded and remembered why he usually kept his mouth _shut._ He stole a glance at Leon.

Yep. It was obvious, even to Cloud, that his words had made the other man uncomfortable. _Way to go,_ he mentally scolded himself. _Why don't you just come right out and tell him you're gay and he's gorgeous. You might as well just throw yourself at the man and be done with it!_

Boy, he bet Leon never said stupid things. He bet Leon actually thought things through before opening his mouth.

_'Hey now,'_ Zack mumbled drowsily. _'You really shouldn't be so hard on yourself, Spike. You know you haven't been this attracted to anyone since your adolescent infatuation with me.'_

_'Gee ... thanks, Zack. Was that supposed to be helpful?'_ God, Leon was probably straight too, just like Zack, and Cloud certainly remembered how well _that_ turned out. If he wasn't more careful, he could end up making just as big an ass of himself with Leon.

_'And speaking of asses, dear, I can certainly see why you're so smitten with Leon's. Love those belts.'_

_'Mother! I think you've been hanging out with Zack too much!'_

_'Well, I was still a young woman when I passed on, dear. I may be dead, but I'm not, you know ... dead. Besides, there's no harm in looking.'_

_'And your mom is quite the looker, Spike – kinda like an older, female version of you, and you know I always did think you were adorable.'_ Cloud could practically feel Zack's phantom hand ruffling his hair. _'There's something very sexy about a good-looking older woman.'_

_'Zack, please! She's my_ mother _.'_

_'Aw come on, Spike.'_ Zack's laughter rang out bright and sunny in Cloud's head, just as clearly as it had in life. _'Can't you take a joke?'_

_'I think it's kind of sweet, Zack – my baby looking out for me like that.'_

_'I was trying to talk to myself here if you don't mind...'_ Cloud finally lost his patience. Geez, it was bad enough that they talked to _him; s_ ince when had they started talking to each other?

_'Fine, dear, we'll just go back to sleep.'_

_'That's separately, right?'_ Cloud squinched his eyes shut as if that could hold back the horrible vision that was trying to seep into his mind.

_'Spoilsport.'_ Zack laughed again, then added in a more serious tone, _'But promise you'll call us if you need us, okay?'_

_'I promise,'_ Cloud agreed, if only to get them to go away. Then his mother blew him a ghostly good-bye kiss, and Zack signed off with a cheery see-you-later salute and slowly faded away like some spiky-headed Cheshire cat, leaving his cheeky grin to linger long after the rest of his image had disappeared. Cloud held his breath and mentally counted to ten, releasing it only after the seconds had passed without further comment from the peanut gallery.

_Finally_ – a little peace and quiet! Now where was he?

Oh, right – he was beating himself up for embarrassing Leon. Great way to repay the man for his kindness.

_'Yes, but he's only being nice because you're Aerith's friend',_ sneered the silver-haired demon on his shoulder. _'It doesn't mean he likes you. You had better be more careful, little puppet, before he kicks your sorry ass out.'_

Well, at least the demon gave good advice, unlike his mother and Zack...

Leon, meanwhile, had jumped up from the table and busied himself at the sink, turning his back to the blond to hide his humiliation. What had Cloud meant by his mocking remark? Was he making fun of him for his excessive solicitude?

Was he suggesting that Leon _wanted_ him in his bed?

_Oh god. Leon_ groaned, scrubbing furiously at the dirty dishes. _He probably thinks I'm gay_. He buried his face in his hand and then realized it was covered with soap suds.

_I'd better get a grip before I make a total moron of myself,_ he thought, grabbing the dishtowel and wiping his face – _if I haven't already._ Then he remembered how he had just been stroking Cloud's wing, and his stomach did a double flip.

_Shit_. He would have been better off doing laundry.

_He probably thinks I want him in my bed, which of course, I_ don't _, but_ he _doesn't know that, and he probably won't even want to be frien– not that I_ want _to be friends, but he probably gets really tired of people coming on to him all the time, as beautiful as he– not that_ I _think he's–_ "Huh?"

"I said that I sometimes – I mean that, I didn't mean that – uh, sometimes I –" Cloud stumbled around, tripping over his tongue until Leon put him out of his misery.

"Whatever."

Leon took a deep breath and turned around, only to find himself face to face with the other man, who was now standing behind him, clutching his empty bowl. The poor blond looked in even worse shape than he was, and Leon was struck by an unaccustomed attack of compassion. "Besides," he said, attempting to pass the whole thing off as a joke, "I doubt it would be much of an _honor_."

"Oh, I think it would be _quite_ an honor."

Leon grabbed the empty bowl from Cloud's hands and busied himself at the sink again, and Cloud was busy trying to figure out how to remove his _other_ foot from his mouth, when they heard the sound of the front door being opened, followed shortly by the sound of Aerith's voice and then the appearance of Aerith herself, thereby saving the two men from themselves.

As soon as she saw Cloud, she went into mother mode, wanting to know how he was feeling and how he had slept and whether or not he had eaten anything, to which Cloud had answered 'fine, fine, and yes', but Aerith didn't seem convinced. Bending forward, she studied his face for signs that all was not as peachy as he professed.

Cloud attempted to distance himself from her scrutiny by leaning back against the counter, but Aerith simply followed him by leaning even further forward. Finally losing his patience, Cloud grasped her firmly by both shoulders and gently pushed her back. "Aerith, _I'm fine._ "

Leon was surprised by the faint glimmer of annoyance in Cloud's voice – the first small flicker of impatience that he had seen from the other man – and directed at _Aerith,_ no less, towards whom he had previously shown an amazing amount of forbearance.

Still, Leon understood only too well how trying Aerith's well-meaning concern could be and how difficult it could be to get her to stop, so when Yuffie stuck her head in the kitchen a few moments later, informing them that Cloudy's clean clothes were in Leon's room and that she was spending the rest of the afternoon helping Cid, Leon seized the opportunity to pry Cloud out from under Aerith's overly protective thumb. "I'll go with you," he stated and then turned to Cloud. "You want to come?"

Of course, that started Aerith up again before Cloud could even answer, protesting that he had lost too much blood and was still far too weak, and that it was–

"Aerith," Leon cut her off. "I'll protect him from danger – I promise. Some fresh air will do him good."

Aerith knew it was pointless to continue arguing once Leon had spoken in _that_ tone of voice, but she made it very clear that she wasn't happy about it. She folded her arms, mimicking Leon's obstinate pose, and pouted.

"You could come too," he suggested, but she refused to be placated by such an obvious attempt to appease her.

"I have things to do here," she insisted.

"Well, then you can enjoy the afternoon to yourself, and I'll pick something up from the diner on the way back so you don't have to cook."

Cloud was already in the bedroom getting dressed.

**۵۵۵۵۵**

Once he had finished securing the armor on his shoulder and around a slender thigh, Cloud stopped and stared at Vincent's cape. The idea of donning his missing friend's apparel went against his sense of propriety, yet the sense of unease which flooded him at the thought of _not_ wearing it was even more unsettling. It nagged at the back of his mind until he finally just shoved his misgivings aside and threw the damn cloak over his shoulders. Then he grabbed his sword and made his escape, hiding the lower half of his face beneath the cowl of Vincent's cape as he slunk past Aerith's watchful gaze.

Leon and Yuffie were already outside, clearing the area of Heartless while they waited for Cloud, and when he stepped from the house, Leon caught himself once again staring. Gone was the fragile young man, and in his place stood a formidable warrior, huge sword strapped to his back and Vincent's red cape billowing around his belted legs. Leon watched with an admiration that bordered on awe as the man walked down the stairs to join them.

As soon as they passed through the door to First District, Yuffie took off at a gallop, leaving the two men to follow at a more dignified pace, and Leon found that walking through town with Cloud at his side was not an altogether unpleasant experience.

In spite of the fact that he was almost always the center of attention, Leon had never sought it, nor did he particularly enjoy it – difficult to believe, perhaps, based on the way he chose to dress, but it was true. Leon didn't dress to draw attention to himself; he just happened to like leather and belts. The same could be said about the quiet and unassuming young man who walked beside him, with his flaming red cape and outrageous blond spikes. But whether they sought the attention or not, you can be certain they received it in copious amounts, and to Leon's dismay, he found it almost _enjoyable._ When the townspeople smiled at the sight of the two strong warriors, he came dangerously close to returning them.

Without even being coerced, he gave Cloud a quick tour of First District, pointing out the best places to purchase particular items and which places to avoid like the plague (the mayor's office topping that list). When they reached Cid's accessory shop, he stepped aside to let Cloud enter first.

"Well I'll be damned," Cid bellowed, clapping Cloud on the back. "If it ain't my favorite spiky-haired peckerhead. How the hell'd ya manage to get away from Mother-May-I?"

"Bossman here busted him out," Yuffie boasted, gesturing towards Leon with a jerk of her thumb. "Seriously – you didn't think ol' Cloudy-Boy would be able to tell her no?

Cloud just rolled his eyes in response, and Leon didn't respond at all, just headed straight for the delivery area and started hauling in boxes. A shipment of supplies had come in that morning, and Cid, having recently torn a muscle in his lower back, couldn't do any heavy lifting. Cloud attempted to help, but Leon wouldn't let him, insisting that he didn't want to face Aerith's wrath should he tear any stitches. So Cloud parked himself at the counter and started browsing through Cid's gummi catalog.

Delighted to have a captive audience with whom to discuss his favorite subject, Cid quickly joined him, and Cloud listened politely as the pilot pointed out the special properties of all the different blocks, pausing occasionally to bark out an order at Yuffie as she unpacked the boxes that Leon dragged in.

"Where do you want these?" Leon interrupted, holding out a box of special-order items for Sora.

"Uh, just stick 'em in the back room next to the new parts for his ship." Cid indicated the general direction with a distracted wave of his hand as if Leon didn't know where the back room was, then immediately returned to his lecture on engine gummis, hardly missing a beat. "Like I was sayin', this here Haste might cost a good bit more, but it's worth every single munny, and if you ever run into a goddamn Diablo out there with nothin' more'n a Fira-G on your ship, you'll sure as hell know why."

"Did you ever figure out where they came from?" Cloud asked, picking up one of the blocks on the counter and rolling it around on his fingers. When the strange little objects had begun to rain from the sky back on Gaia, they had assumed it was simply fallout from Meteor, but if they were found on the other planets as well, then that obviously wasn't the case.

"From the goddamn barriers between the worlds." Cid flicked the straw in his mouth with a thumb. "Who the fuck would've figured?"

Leon returned from the storeroom at that moment and answered Cloud's question with a little more detail and a lot less color. "The barriers between the worlds are made of gummi," he explained, "and when a world is invaded by Heartless, the barrier breaks apart. Some of the pieces fall to the planet, but there's even more of them still floating around out in space."

"Sora picks up a shitload of the things on his travels and then sells 'em to me," Cid added, confessing his secret desire to go into the gummi-building business full time, which was certainly no surprise, given his love of flying, and even less of a secret since everybody knew it. He was already dabbling in gummis on the side – had been since arriving in Traverse Town – and he admitted that the accessory shop was only a temporary endeavor until he could gather enough funds to set up a full-fledged shop.

"It shouldn't be much longer," he said. "I've already built up a fairly extensive inventory, and demand is boomin', 'specially from the worlds where Sora ain't sealed the keyhole yet – people want to make sure they've got a way to get away. Why, I've even gotten a few orders from as far away as Never-fuckin'-fairy-land!

"Hey – you could come work for me once I get the business up and runnin'," Cid suggested, but their conversation was interrupted before Cloud could respond.

"Breaktime," Yuffie yelled, vaulting over the counter and plopping her skinny little butt down squarely on Cid's stool. Ignoring his angry glare, she kicked off the counter and began spinning around, picking up speed with every pass.

"Stop spinning around on that goddamn stool, you little ninja shithead," Cid barked. "It's brand fuckin' new, and you're gonna break it just like you did the last one!"

"Oh pipe down, old man; I'm not gonna break your stupid old stool." Yuffie snorted as her face spun in and out of view. "The last one was already broken, and you know it; you were just too cheap to buy a new one, so I finished it off for you. _I did you a favor_ , you old coot."

"Well don't do me any more," Cid snapped. "I can't afford your fuckin' favors."

Leon rubbed at his scar and glanced at the door.

"Yeah, she gives me a fuckin' headache too," Cid grumbled. "Hey, ya know, you oughta get Chocobo-head here to give you a massage for those headaches of yours. Kid works wonders with those hands of his; it's the only damn thing he's good for other than swinging that sword. Course, I call first dibs for this old back of mine; you'll have to get in line."

"Hey, that's right, Leon," Yuffie agreed as the stool slowly wound to a stop. "You totally should. Cloudykins has magical fingers." She wiggled her fingers in the air to illustrate her point.

Leon's only response was another longing look at the door, so Cid and Yuffie went back to bickering with each other, and Cloud changed the subject.

"I remember when Cid first started messing around with these things," he said, holding up a gummi between his forefinger and his thumb. "He was like a kid in a candy shop, going on and on about what an incredible substance it was and what amazing astronautical properties it had. We just shook our heads and laughed, but when he started talking about building a _spaceship_ out of the weird little blocks, we thought Cid's _brain_ had turned to gummi." Cloud chuckled softly, glancing at his cantankerous old friend with obvious affection in his eyes.

"Then I'll be damned if he and Yuffie didn't show up for our reunion in Edge in Cid's new ship, and we were all forced to eat a hearty helping of crow. Seems the _old coot_ wasn't so crazy after all." Cloud's eyes took on a faraway sadness, and he added quietly, "Guess it's a good thing he didn't listen to us."

Disturbed by Cloud's melancholy turn of mind, Leon motioned towards the door. "Why don't we head on over to the diner? They can finish putting away the rest of this stuff."

Cloud tried to decline, protesting that he wasn't comfortable with not being able to pay his own way, especially after everything that Leon had already done for him, but Leon assured him that he fully intended to recoup his investment just as soon as Cloud recovered his strength. And in order to do that, he needed to eat.

Cloud suggested eagerly that he could start earning his keep first thing in the morning by helping them fight the Heartless, but on that, Leon had to agree with Aerith.

**۵۵۵۵۵**

"So how does one go about earning a living in this town?"

Leon didn't have a chance to answer Cloud's question before the waitress arrived to take their order, and for once, he found himself practically ignored. She was far too busy flirting with Cloud, hopeful of having more luck with the handsome new stranger than she had with Leon. But Leon kept his promise to Aerith to protect Cloud from danger, and to Leon's mind, that included unwanted advances from pushy waitresses. His icy glare, combined with Cloud's obvious lack of interest, quickly dissuaded the disappointed woman, and she left the two unsociable men to themselves.

Once she was gone, Leon returned his attention to Cloud, the cold silver edge in his eyes softening to a slightly warmer hue. "Fighting the Heartless pays well enough most days; you can keep whatever they drop. _If_ you can get to it before Yuffie, that is. But what about Cid's offer?"

"I wouldn't mind working for Cid, but I don't know when that'll be. I can't bum off of you until then. And I'll need a place to live; you can't sleep on the sofa forever."

"No," Leon agreed. "My place was a little cramped even before you showed up."

"So, how _did_ you end up living with Aerith and Yuffie?"

"Oh, well ... about that ..." Leon sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "That was never really the plan. It was supposed to be temporary."

Cloud took a sip of water and settled back in his seat, looking forward to just listening to the sound of Leon's voice. Unfortunately, it wasn't forthcoming. Leon appeared to be done with his answer, which, in typical Leon fashion, hadn't answered anything at all. "So what happened?" Cloud prodded.

Realizing that Cloud was expecting a _real_ answer, and feeling a disturbing desire not to disappoint him, Leon made an honest attempt at actual conversation. "Well," he began slowly, turning it over in his head. "It was a very busy time here. Worlds had been disappearing at an alarming rate, and the town was overrun with new refugees. All of the available housing had been filled, and this whole square –" He indicated the area outside the cafe with a wave of his hand. "– was filled with makeshift shelters. There wasn't an empty bed to be had.

"Except at my house," he admitted. "I ... _resisted_ giving up my privacy for as long as I could, but things were to the point that even I could no longer justify having a two bedroom house all to myself. Your friends just happened to be the next refugees to show up."

The waitress returned with their food at that point, which was served with a complimentary pot of tea and another round of mindless chatter while Leon waited in stony silence, and Cloud examined the shaker of salt. But one look at Leon's face sent her scurrying back to the other waitresses, any further thoughts of flirting dead before they could even reach her lips. Job accomplished, Leon poured himself a cup of tea and took a couple of bites of food. When it became apparent that another prod would be necessary to get Leon talking again, Cloud asked, "So all three of them moved in with you?"

Leon nodded. "Luckily, Cid took over the accessory shop a few weeks later and set up sleeping quarters for himself in the loft. Things got a little better after that, without him and Yuffie yelling at each other all the time."

"They do have an odd way of expressing their affection," Cloud interjected. "You'd never know they're actually quite fond of each other."

"Well, I just hope I never have to live with the two of them _together_ ever again." Leon shook his head. "Sharing a small house with Yuffie and Cid is not an experience I care to repeat. At any rate," he continued after another couple of bites, "I always planned on moving the girls into the first available housing, or finding a smaller place for myself and letting them stay there." He paused again to finish his dinner, surprising Cloud when he resumed the conversation a few minutes later all on his own without further prodding.

"The overcrowding eased up a bit after Sora showed up," he said, pushing his plate to the side and topping off his tea. "Cid built a couple of transport gummis, and as Sora sealed worlds, we were able to move some of the people to other locations. Even so, there was always someone new to fill every vacancy." He shrugged. "Time passed."

Both men suddenly became aware that all three of the waitresses were watching them from the wings and giggling. Then the one who had been serving them ambled over to the table, take-out order in hand and hips deliberately swaying. "What?" Leon snapped.

"It's just that none of us have ever seen you talk so much, Lee-on," she replied, drawing out the vowels in his name in what she must have thought was a seductive manner. Then she turned to Cloud and gave him her most provocative smile, bending down to flash a little cleavage as she set the take-out bags on the table. "Honestly," she cooed, "the man never says more than two words. Can I get you something else, hon?"

"Just the bill," Leon snapped again, digging some munny out of his pocket and slapping it down on the table as he got up to leave. Cloud jumped up right behind him, and the two men made a beeline back to the accessory shop to drop off one of the take-out orders for Cid and pick up Yuffie. Leon was sullen all the way there. The waitress's last remark had deeply disturbed him.

She might be an airheaded bimbo, but she was _right_ ; he had probably spoken more words in the last hour than he had said during his entire time in Traverse Town. Maybe during his entire _life_.

There was something about the man beside him that made him let down his guard, yet made him nervous at the same time, and that was a deadly combination; a combination that could easily lead to unfettered feelings and loose lips, both very dangerous things. Like unrestrained puppies, they did the most embarrassing things: They dug up your neighbor's newly planted flowerbeds and left unwanted presents on their lawn. Then you would have to go over and clean up the mess, hanging your head in shame.

Well, he would just have to tie up those puppies more tightly. It wouldn't do to go getting too familiar with the new neighbor.

And speaking of uncontrollable puppies.…

"Gawd, you think you two slow pokes could hurry it up a bit? I'm about to die here of mal-noo-trition. In other words, I'm _starving_ ; wasting away to nothing before your very eyes!" Yuffie stopped somersaulting around the square long enough to grab the bags of food from Cloud's hands, and then raced off towards the door to Third District.

"Don't you dare go in there alone, Yuffie," Leon yelled irritably. "And don't you dare drop that food."

Cloud snorted softly and shook his head. "I swear that girl never runs out of energy. And thanks for dinner, by the way," he added in a more serious tone. "You're very generous, Leon."

"Not really," Leon begged to differ. "It's just that there's no telling where any of us will end up tomorrow. This wouldn't do me any good back on my world," he said, tossing a five munny piece in the air. "What's the point in hanging on to it?"

Cloud snatched the crystal from the air with agility and grace, but he had no answer for Leon's question and walked the rest of the way home in silence, just staring at the little yellow bead in his hand as the truth of Leon's words sank in.

**۵۵۵۵۵**

"Those things'll eat your stomach, you know."

Leon glanced from the aspirin in his hand to the man in the doorway. "Yeah," he mumbled, "I know."

Cloud leaned back against the doorjamb and crossed his arms. "You get a lot of headaches?"

"Yeah, I guess." Leon shrugged. "Yeah."

Cloud remained in the doorway, neither fully in nor fully out of the room, and debated with himself, neither fully committed to his plan of action nor fully willing to let it go. Should he broach the subject that had been weighing on his mind since this afternoon or just leave well enough alone? Jump in with both feet or retreat?

He genuinely wanted to help the other man if he could, but he didn't want to make him uncomfortable, and judging from Leon's reaction to the idea when Cid and Yuffie had brought it up earlier, that's exactly what the mention of a massage would do.

He also wanted to give something back to the other man, even though Leon had insisted it wasn't necessary, and he didn't have a lot of options at the moment for repaying that debt. On the other hand, putting Leon in an awkward position that would make him uncomfortable would only increase that debt.

Unable to decide, Cloud was just about to give up and leave when Leon set the bottle of aspirin back in the medicine cabinet and tossed the little white pills in his mouth, thereby solidly throwing the debate in favor of helping. Cloud stood up straight and took a small step into the room. "You know," he blurted out before he could change his mind or lose his courage, "I really do know a bit about massage. I might be able to help."

"Oh ..." Leon washed the pills down with a handful of water from the bathroom faucet, "...thanks. But that really isn't necessary."

"I've been told that I'm not half bad." Cloud attempted once more to convince him. His second attempt wasn't answered with words, but the increased tension in Leon's shoulders and the nervous glance towards the door told Cloud everything he needed to know. The man felt trapped; Cloud knew the feeling well and recognized the familiar signs. "Yeah, bad idea," he mumbled, dropping his eyes to the floor and stepping away from the door, but Leon didn't bolt as expected.

"It isn't a bad idea. It's just–" He made a weak gesture towards the floor with his hand. "It doesn't have anything to do with you."

At the tired resignation in Leon's voice, Cloud looked up and fully met his gaze. "You don't like to be touched." It was stated with such sincerity and certainty that it caused Leon to examine the other man with renewed curiosity, and the understanding that he found in the younger man's eyes made him wonder if Cloud had issues of his own.

He _had_ seemed rather uncomfortable in Aerith's embrace yesterday, but at the time, Leon had assumed it was because of his relationship with Tifa. Aerith had mentioned that the two of them lived together. Romantically, Leon presumed.

There was also Cloud's reaction when Leon had woken him from his nightmare... Yet he hadn't responded unfavorably when Leon touched his wing...

Having finally come to the conclusion that Leon wasn't going to respond, Cloud turned around to leave.

"It makes me uncomfortable, yes," Leon said to his back, fighting off the urge to simply throw out his trusty ' _Whatever'._ The least he could do was answer Cloud honestly.

Cloud paused in the doorway, but didn't turn around. "It's just – you've done so much for me, and I have nothing to give you in return."

"I told you to forget it. You don't owe me a thing."

"Yes, I do, Leon," Cloud insisted softly. "Yes, I do. And I told you that I _won't_ forget it." Then he stepped across the hall to go to bed, leaving Leon alone with his insecurities and his headache.

**۵۵۵۵۵**

Later that night, Leon was in the bathroom again for more aspirin when he heard the already familiar sound of Cloud's nightmares starting up across the hall. He wondered if they were a nightly occurrence, and if so, for how long Cloud had endured them.

He was torn between going to check on the man or going back to the couch and trying to ignore the whole thing. Cloud had told him he shouldn't wake him while he was dreaming, but the thought of simply letting him suffer through it went against Leon's sense of ... decency? Duty? ... _Compassion?_

He had experienced nightmares himself for several years after first arriving in Traverse Town, and he knew how distressing they could be. He also knew how debilitating the chronic disruption of sleep could be, and that was the last thing Cloud needed while he was trying to recover.

Leon's head insisted that he should just go back to sleep, but his heart lead him straight to the man in his bed, step by leaden step. He stood there for a moment, still uncertain as to what he should do, but when whimpers turned to tortured moans and mumbled words, all of Leon's doubts disappeared. Carefully securing Cloud's arms this time, he leaned over the blond and quietly called his name.

Cloud responded with another soft cry, but this one carried a note of hope as well as pain, and Leon caught a name among the mumbled words. It was the same name that Cloud had whispered when Leon first found him, and its effect on Leon was unsettling. He became so preoccupied with the struggle to quell his own discomfort that he temporarily forgot about Cloud's – so inwardly focused that he failed to notice when softly glowing eyes locked on his.

"Hey," Cloud whispered, watching the storm smolder in Leon's eyes.

At the sound of Cloud's voice, Leon immediately released his hold on Cloud's arms and straightened up. "You were having another nightmare," he pointed out awkwardly.

The smile on Cloud's face as he looked up at Leon was so tender and shy that it cut through every one of Leon's carefully crafted defenses and broke the gentle heart concealed within, leaving him helpless at Cloud's mercy. Luckily for Leon, Cloud's mercy ran deep, but so did the pain in his eyes, making it all too clear that mercy was something which hadn't been shown to him, and if Leon ever found out who had hurt this man so badly, there was going to be hell to pay.


End file.
